This event will offer simultaneous translation between Japanese and English. 
当イベントは日本語と英語の同時通訳がついています。

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.
当イベントはZoomウェビナーで行われます。ウェビナーに参加するためには、こちらのリンクをクリックし、事前登録をして下さい。

March 1, 5-6:30 p.m. California time/ March 2, 10-11:30 a.m. Japan time

This event is part of the 2022 Japan Program Winter webinar series, The Future of Social Tech: U.S.-Japan Partnership in Advancing Technology and Innovation with Social Impact

 

The challenges of climate change require solutions on multiple fronts, one of which is technological innovation. Attempts for innovation for new energy sources have been ongoing in many parts of the world, and Japan has produced a number of new technologies. This session will focus on two of the most promising innovations coming out of Japan, biofuel and hydrogen energy, and assess their promises and challenges, highlighting technological, regulatory, and business aspects of developing new technologies. Where do these technologies fit in the energy portfolio that would address the issues of climate change and what can Japan and the United States do to collaboratively solve the key problems in advancing these technologies further? Three leading experts in the field will discuss these questions that would shape the future of climate change. 

 

Panelists

Mitsuru Izumo is a graduate of the University of Tokyo, having specialised in agricultural structural
management. In 2005, he established Euglena Co., Ltd. to harness the properties of microalgae
Euglena. Euglena Co., Ltd. became the world’s first biotechnology company that succeeded in the
outdoor mass cultivation of Euglena. Currently, Euglena Co., Ltd upholds “Sustainability First” as
their philosophy and has developed the manufacture and sale of foods and cosmetics as the
healthcare domain, the biofuel business, the bioinformatics business, and the social business in
Bangladesh by leveraging Euglena and other advanced technologies.

 

 

Eiji Ohira is the Director General of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)’s Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technology Office In this capacity, he is responsible for the overall strategy, execution and coordination of NEDO’s research, development and demonstration project on fuel cell and hydrogen.

He has also coordinated fuel cell and hydrogen activities with international stakeholders, through International Energy Agency’s Technology Collaboration Program (IEA TCP: Advanced Fuel Cell & Hydrogen), and International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy (IPHE). 

He joined the NEDO in 1992, just after graduation from the Tokyo University of Science. He served as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997-1998.

 

Moderator

Kate Hardin, Deloitte Executive Director for Energy and Industrials Research, has worked in the energy industry for 25 years.  She currently leads Deloitte research on the impact of the energy transition on the energy and industrial manufacturing sectors. Before that, Kate led integrated coverage of transportation decarbonization and the implications for the oil, gas, and power sectors.  Kate has also developed global energy research for institutional investors and has led analysis of Russian and European energy developments.  Kate recently served as an expert in residence at Yale’s Center for Business and Environment, and she is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  

 

This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, New Frontiers: Technology, Politics, and Society in the Asia-Pacific, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

This event will offer simultaneous translation between Japanese and English. 
当イベントは日本語と英語の同時通訳がついています。

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.
当イベントはZoomウェビナーで行われます。ウェビナーに参加するためには、こちらのリンクをクリックし、事前登録をして下さい。

Febuary 14, 4-5:30 p.m. California time/ February 15, 9-10:30 a.m. Japan time

This event is part of the 2022 Japan Program Winter webinar series, The Future of Social Tech: U.S.-Japan Partnership in Advancing Technology and Innovation with Social Impact

 

COVID-19 has changed the way we work. While remote work has become the norm, the pandemic has also highlighted the inequity in childcare, elderly care, and household work. Japanese workplaces feel a particularly acute need for adjustment, as lack of digitalization and persistent gender inequality continue to limit productivity gains and diversity in the workforce. Social entrepreneurs in Japan have started offering new technologies that address these problems and transform Japanese work environments, using matching algorithms, innovative apps, and other new technologies. How can these social technologies reshape the workplace? What principles do we need in using these technologies in practice, in order to unlock the keys to untapped human resource potentials and realize a more equitable and inclusive work environment in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere?  Fuhito Kojima, a renowned economist specializing in matching theory, will talk about market design from the perspective of regulation design and economics, and Eiko Nakazawa, an influential entrepreneur, will speak about her experiences founding education and childcare startups in the United States and Japan, moderated by Yasumasa Yamamoto, a leading expert on technology and business in Japan and the United States. 

 

Panelists

Fuhito Kojima is a Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo and Director of the University of Tokyo Market Design Center. He received a B.A. at University of Tokyo (2003) and PhD at Harvard (2008), both in economics and taught at Yale (2008-2009, as postdoc) and then Stanford (2009-2020, as professor) while spending one year at Columbia in his sabbatical year. His research involves game theory, with a particular focus on “market design,” a field where game-theoretic analysis is applied to study the design of various mechanisms and institutions. His recent works include matching mechanism designs with complex constraints, and he is working on improving medical residency match and daycare seat allocation in Japan based on his academic work. Outside of academia, he serves as an advisor for Keizai Doyu Kai as well as several private companies.

 

Eiko Nakazawa is the Founder and CEO of Dearest, Inc., a VC-Backed startup in the United States that makes high-quality learning, childcare, and parenting support accessible by helping employers subsidize those costs for their working families. She also advises and invests in early-stage startups, and has recently co-founded Ikura, Inc., an education x fintech company in Japan. Prior to founding Dearest, Nakazawa spent 11 years with Sony Corporation, where she led global marketing, turnaround, and new business launch initiatives. Nakazawa earned an M.S. in Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

 

Moderator

Yasumasa Yamamoto is a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University graduate school of management and has been a specialist in emerging technology such as fintech, blockchain, and deep learning. He was previously industry analyst at Google, senior specialist in quantitative analysis of secularized products, as well as derivatives at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi in New York. Yamamoto holds a M.S. from Harvard University and a masters degree from University of Tokyo.

 

This event will offer simultaneous translation between Japanese and English. 
当イベントは日本語と英語の同時通訳がついています。

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.
当イベントはZoomウェビナーで行われます。ウェビナーに参加するためには、こちらのリンクをクリックし、事前登録をして下さい。

February 7, 5-6:30 p.m. California time/ February 8, 10-11:30 a.m. Japan time

This event is part of the 2022 Japan Program Winter webinar series, The Future of Social Tech: U.S.-Japan Partnership in Advancing Technology and Innovation with Social Impact

Japan’s startup scene has become more exciting in recent years, but in the medical field, the failure to develop COVID-19 vaccines highlighted the shortcomings of Japan’s medical industry. What should Japan do to foster more impactful biotechnology entrepreneurship that would leverage vibrant medical research carried out at Japanese universities? The panel features two speakers who founded and grew their medical ventures in Japan's rapidly maturing startup ecosystem, both with deep connections to university research. 

Tadahisa Kagimoto founded his first company right after finishing his medical degree at Kyushu University, pioneering a pathway of commercializing biotechnology from Japanese university research. His second startup, Healios, founded in 2013 with the goal of becoming a pioneer in regenerative medicine utilizing iPS, was successfully listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2015 and has been growing since.

Shoko Takahashi was a PhD student in molecular bioscience at the University of Tokyo when she founded her company, Genequest, to offer home DNA testing. The firm was purchased by another biotech startup founded by a University of Tokyo graduate, Euglena, in 2017, and the company has partnered with a variety of pharmaceutical, food and beverage companies, and universities in its research. Their entrepreneurial journeys reveal Japan's changing startup ecosystem that has rapidly matured over the past decade and signal a need for further development in regulatory environments, human resource development, and university-industry collaboration in the biotechnology industry.

 

Panelists

Hardy TS Kagimoto, MD is founder, Chairman and CEO of HEALIOS K.K., a Tokyo-based, clinical-stage world leader in regenerative medicine and cell therapy. 

After founding Healios in 2011, Dr. Kagimoto led the company’s listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2015 and has built the company to its current scale of more than 140 people across its Japan and US offices. Healios leverages the favorable Japanese regulatory framework for regenerative medicine to efficiently deliver results for patients and its stakeholders. It is currently running two pivotal clinical trials for ischemic stroke and acute respiratory distress syndrome using bone marrow-derived allogeneic multipotent adult progenitor cells. At the same time, Healios is developing best-in-class, next generation pipeline assets in immuno-oncology, ophthalmology, and organ buds utilizing its innovative, proprietary universal donor iPS cell platform.

 

Shoko Takahashi founded the Japanese personal genome company Genequest Inc. in 2013 while a graduate student at the University of Tokyo. Genequest provides a web-based personal genetic service for consumers and collaborates with research institutions in a large-scale genome research project to maximize synergistic effects between research and personal genome services. She is filled with ambition to accelerate genetic research and contribute to human health all over the world. She graduated from the University of Tokyo with a Ph.D. in Molecular Bioscience in 2015, and Kyoto University with a Bachelor of Biochemistry Science in 2010. She has been awarded the Japan Venture Award and received the highest rating by the Japan Ministry of Economy. In 2015, she was commended by the Japan Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as one of the researchers contributing major innovations to science technologies in Japan.

She received the 2018 Young Global Leaders award from the World Economic Forum and was selected for Newsweek's ‘100 respected Japanese in the world’ list.

 

Moderator

Kenji E. Kushida is a Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously was with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a research scholar.

Kushida’s research and projects focused on the following streams : 1) how politics and regulations shape the development and diffusion of Information Technology such as AI; 2) institutional underpinnings of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, 2) Japan's transforming political economy, 3) Japan's startup ecosystem, 4) the role of foreign multinational firms in Japan, 4) Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. He spearheaded the Silicon Valley - New Japan project that brought together large Japanese firms and the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Japan’s Startup Ecosystem,” "How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic 'Galapagos' Telecommunications Sector," “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution’s Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016).

 

About the Seminar: Joseph Needham famously asked why China did not have its own Industrial Revolution. Using a newly constructed database, Yasheng Huang will show that China’s technological collapse happened much earlier than previously thought and the collapse coincided closely with the rise of autocracy and ideological homogeneity.
 

Register Now

About the Speaker:

Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation professor of international management, professor of global economics and management, and faculty director of action learning at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently involved in research projects in three broad areas: 1) political economy of contemporary China, 2) historical technological and political developments in China, and 3) as a co-PI in “Food Safety in China: A Systematic Risk Management Approach” (supported by Walmart Foundation, 2016-). He has published numerous articles in academic journals and in media and 11 books in English and Chinese. His book, The Rise and the Fall of the EAST: Examination, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology in Chinese History and Today, will be published by Yale University Press in 2023.

 

Please note the event time has been changed to 10:30AM (PT) to 12:00PM (PT).

 

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register for the talk. 

 

This event is presented in partnership with Global:SF and the State of California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.
 

U.S.-China economic relations have grown increasingly fraught and competitive.  Even amidst intensifying tensions, however, our two major economies remain intertwined.  While keeping alert to national security concerns, the economic strength of the United States will depend on brokering a productive competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy.  Precipitous decoupling of trade, investment, and human talent flows between the two nations will inflict unnecessary harm to U.S. economic interests -- and those of California.  

Chinese trade and investments into California have grown exponentially over the last decade.  But they have come under increasing pressure following geopolitical and economic tensions between the two nations, particularly in the science and technology sectors.  This session will explore the role of Chinese economic activity in California in the context of the greater US-Chinese relationship. 

 

Craig Allen began his tenure in Washington, DC, as the sixth President of the United States-China Business Council, a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization representing over 200 American companies doing business with China. Ambassador Allen began his government career in 1985 at the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) where, from 1986 to 1988, he worked as an international economist in ITA’s China Office. In 1988, Allen transferred to the American Institute in Taiwan, where he served as Director of the American Trade Center in Taipei. He returned to the Department of Commerce for a three-year posting at the US Embassy in Beijing as Commercial Attaché in 1992. In 1995, Allen was assigned to the US Embassy in Tokyo where he was promoted to Deputy Senior Commercial Officer in 1998. Allen became a member of the Senior Foreign Service in 1999. Starting from 2000, he served a two-year tour at the National Center for APEC in Seattle where he worked on the APEC Summits in Brunei, China, and Mexico. In 2002, Allen first served as the Senior Commercial Officer in Beijing where he was later promoted to the Minister Counselor rank of the Senior Foreign Service. After a four-year tour in South Africa, Ambassador Allen became Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia at the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. He later became Deputy Assistant Secretary for China. Ambassador Allen was sworn in as the United States ambassador to Brunei Darussalam on December 19, 2014 where he served until he transitioned to take up his position as President of the US-China Business Council.
 

David Cheng is the chair and managing partner of Nixon Peabody’s China and Asia-Pacific practice. He is qualified in both the United States and Hong Kong. He focuses on cross-border transactions, litigations and investigations, advising on issues ranging from acquisitions, capital financing (initial public offering), intellectual property protection and disputes to fraud, FCPA and SEC investigations. He has a client portfolio from all over the world, including the United States, Middle East, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong.
 

James Green has worked for over two decades on U.S.-Asia relations. For five years, Green was the Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing (2013-2018).  As the senior official in China from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Green was deeply involved in all aspects of trade negotiations, trade enforcement, and in reducing market access barriers for American entities.  In prior government service, Green worked on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and at the State Department’s China Desk on bilateral affairs. He also served as the China Director of the White House’s National Security Council.  In the private sector, Green was a senior vice president at the global strategy firm founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and was the founding government relations manager at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, Asia’s largest AmCham.  Currently, Green is a Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and hosts a U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast.  He was most recently named as APARC's inaugural China Policy Fellow. 
 

Anja Manuel is Co-Founder and Principal, along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps US companies navigate international markets. She currently serves on two corporate boards: Overseas Shipping Group, Inc., a NYSE listed energy transportation company, and Ripple Labs Inc., a leading blockchain payments company. Manuel also serves on several advisory boards, including Former Governor Brown’s California Export Council. From 2005-2007, she served as an official at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for South Asia Policy. She is a frequent commentator on foreign policy and technology policy, for TV and radio (NBC/MSNBC, Fox Business, BBC, Bloomberg, Charlie Rose, NPR, etc.) and writes for publications ranging from the New York Times, to the Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among others. She is the author of the critically acclaimed This Brave New World: India, China and the United States, published by Simon and Schuster in 2016. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Stanford University, Manuel now also lectures and is a Research Affiliate at Stanford University. She is the Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum -- the premier bipartisan forum on foreign policy in the U.S. -- and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

 

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This Session is part of a larger conference series titled “The New Economy Conference – California’s Place in the New Global Economy”.   The New Economy Conference will broadcast public programs from April 21-May 25 on a weekly basis, designed to inform and identify the impact of COVID-19 on the economic competitiveness and resilience of the State of California.  Topics addressed will include Challenges and Opportunities Post-COVID in California (4/21); the International Dimension (4/28), Investing in the New Economy and Keeping Businesses in California (5/5); Sustainability and Urbanism (5/12); Navigating Chinese Investment, Trade and Technology (5/19); and Where do We Go from Here? (6/09).