Staff of San Francisco Visit West Coast Universities

One important function of the JSPS San Francisco Office is to conduct academic exchanges with universities and science-promotion agencies in the US. In this vein, the staff recently made visits to Stanford University and the Irvine and Davis campuses of the University of California. The following is a brief description of those visits.

Stanford University

Office director Prof. Seishi Takeda gave a briefing on JSPS's fellowships and other programs at the "Scientific Mobility Conference" held at Stanford University on 7 September. The staff also set up a booth, which was visited by a good number of inquisitive young researchers from the university.

UC Irvine

On 11 September, the staff participated in a workshop at UC Irvine. Prof. Takeda gave a presentation on JSPS's programs and the office's activities. He fielded many questions particularly regarding JSPS's fellowship programs. Even after the workshop, many professors and students stayed to ask about and discuss with the staff opportunities to do research in Japan offered by JSPS.

UC Davis

The staff held a workshop at UC Davis on 5 October. It focused mainly on JSPS's fellowship program and the joint colloquium organized by the office. The majority of the participants were university faculty, who engaged the staff in a spirited discussion about the two programs. Follow-up information was sent to the faculty in expectation of even stronger collaboration between the university and the office in the future.

All of these visits were conducted very successfully as they accorded opportunities for the office staff to exchange views with the staffs of the universities and with the participants of the meetings, who in each case showed a high interest in JSPS's activities.

- JSPS San Francisco Office