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We have added an extra deadline for the Japanese Language Local Project Support Programme this year for primary schools.
If you are a primary school, and you are considering applying for funding for Japanese language classes in September 2015, please send in your application by the 14th of July 2015. In addition to this, there are two other deadlines left this year: September 18th 2015 and November 20th 2015. For further details and an application form, please see our funding page.
If you would like to see an example of the kind of activities primary schools have used to introduce Japanese, please see the case study on St Edmund Campion Catholic Primary School attached below, or the other case studies here.
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The Nihongo Cup Japanese Speech Contest for secondary school students was held at Conway Hall in London on June 20th 2015, open to the public for the very first time.
The 18 finalists, who had been selected from 180 applicants from 20 different schools across the UK, all demonstrated great creativity, thoughtfulness and outstanding ability in Japanese in performing their speeches – not to mention extraordinary courage to present their ideas in a foreign language to an audience of 180 people!
Between each of the three categories of speeches, the audience had the opportunity to watch presentations from schools that had taken part in the Japan Webpage Contest for Schools 2014-15, including Greenford High School, Hockerill Anglo-European College, Holbrook Primary School, Newstead Wood School and Wycliffe College. Their presentations not only showcased their fantastic websites, but also the work they had been doing with Japanese and Japan within their school.
Due to the extremely high level of Japanese and the thought-provoking content of the speeches delivered by all finalists, the judges had extremely difficult decisions to make when choosing the final winners of the 2015 Nihongo Cup. In the end, Grace Oliver (Key Stage 4 and 5 Post-GCSE), Oliver Binns (Key Stage 4 and 5 Pre-GCSE) and heo Nze (Key Stage 3) were awarded first prize in each of their categories.
Many congratulations and a big thank-you to everyone who came together to make the day such a success. The full results of the contest are as follows:
Key Stage 4 and 5 Post-GCSE Category
Other finalists:
Key Stage 4 and 5 Pre-GCSE Category
Other finalists:
Key Stage 3 Category (Speech theme: "My Favourite Person")
Other finalists:
Photos from the contest can be viewed on Facebook here.
The event was organised by the Japanese Language Committee of the Association for Language Learning, in association with the Japan Foundation London.
We are very grateful to Japan Centre, JOBA, JP Books, LinguaLift, Oxford Brookes University, Ricoh UK and Toshiba of Europe Limited donating prizes, to the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Sumisho Computer Systems for their generous sponsorship, and to the Embassy of Japan for their support.
This year the Japan Foundation London will carry out our Survey on Japanese Language Education in the UK. This is part of the Japan Foundation's worldwide survey that takes place every three years and aims to find out about the state of Japanese language education around the world.
When the new school year starts in September, we will send details about this survey to every school and institution that we think teaches Japanese. If you know of any institutions that have recently started teaching Japanese, please do let us know, so that we can include them in this survey. We need to have an accurate idea about the state of Japanese language education in the UK. We hope this will enable us to find better ways to support both teachers and learners of Japanese.
I would like to thank you all very much in advance for your cooperation.
Kenichi Yanagisawa
Director General
Japan Foundation London
On May 27th and 28th, 14 teachers learned basic Japanese language skills through a wide range of fun and educational activities at Learn & Teach Primary Japanese, a course especially for primary school teachers learning Japanese from scratch as part of the Japan Foundation's Primary Japanese Campaign.
The two-day course began at the Institute of Education in London, where teachers first learned some basic Japanese greetings and phrases for self-introductions. This was followed by a workshop in making Japanese hanko rubber stamps, taught by the Japan Foundation's Assistant Japanese Language Advisor, Mio Tsunematsu. By learning about Japan's hanko culture and in making their own, participants also learned the basics of the Japanese writing system. After lunch, the participants learned about the support available from the Japan Foundation for schools looking to start or further develop Japanese language provisions, and then found out more about travelling in Japan while learning Japanese language associated with visiting places.
On day 2, the participants came to Kuriya Keiko for a special workshop on making sushi. This began with learning Japanese vocabulary associated with food, taught by Makoto Netsu (Chief Japanese Language Advisor at the Japan Foundation London). The participants were then taught by Keiko Urakawa, proprietor and instructor at Kuriya Keiko, how to make different kinds of sushi. Despite most of the participants having never made sushi before, everyone created beautiful pieces of culinary art which they then ate for lunch!
After lunch, Netsu-sensei demonstrated how Japanese could be integrated into other parts of the curriculum, by teaching Japanese words and phrases associated with the topic of healthy eating. Much of this content can be found in Japan Foundation's Japanese Scheme of Work for Primary Schools, which is free to download. Finally, everyone shared ideas about how they could integrate some of the activities and language skills they learned over the two days into their own lessons. All participants expressed that they had not only enjoyed the course but had learned a great deal as well – one participant said it was one of the best courses she had ever been on!
Some of the other feedback from participants included:
"Really friendly and well organised and delivered in a really friendly way." (Chris Williams, Lavant C.E. Primary School)
"Cannot fault any part of the event/course. Teaching and materials second to none." (Christopher Weadick, Burleigh Primary School)
We would like to thank all our participants for taking the time out of their half-term break to come on the course, and to everyone at Kuriya Keiko for their brilliant sushi workshop!
If you are interested in introducing Japanese at your primary school, you can find out more about the Primary Japanese Campaign here.
The Japan Foundation London would like to invite travel agents based in the UK to submit bids for the service of coordinating an organised group tour to Japan in this autumn. The necessarily procedures and specifications can be downloaded below.
Please be advised that all the relevant documents concerning this project are provided in Japanese as, due to the nature of the tour, we will require the successful travel agent to be able to communicate comfortably in Japanese.
As a new financial year begins, funding (up to £1,500) is once again available in the area of Japanese Studies/Intellectual Exchange for projects that help to promote a greater awareness of Japan, as well as travel grants (up to £600) for applicants who are planning to visit Japan for research.
:: Click here for more information about the Local Project Support Programme and Study Support Programme.
More than 30 people learned about the omoshiroi (interesting) world of Japanese sweets and souvenirs at the Japan Foundation London's Japanese from Scratch workshop for absolute beginners of Japanese language, which was held on May 11th and 12th.
Led by Mio Tsunematsu, Assistant Japanese Language Advisor at the Japan Foundation London, the workshop began with an introduction to adjectives in Japanese, such as kirei (pretty), kakkoii (cool) and kawaii (cute). This vocabulary, and other useful words and phrases to do with sight-seeing and shopping in Japan, can be found in the Japan Foundation's Marugoto A1 textbook and website.
After practising these words together in their groups, the participants then learned all about the Japanese culture of giving omiyage – edible souvenirs that one brings back home after travelling to share with friends and family, a culture that originates from the ancient customs surrounding pilgrimages. They also learned about the many different kinds of Japanese sweets, from traditional wagashi using ingredients such as pounded rice (mochi) and anko sweet bean jam, to Japanese versions of Western favourites such as the many different regional varieties of KitKat!
At the end of the session, all of the participants had the opportunity to try some oishii (tasty) Japanese sweets, such as daifuku (rice cakes filled with anko), dorayaki (pancakes with anko filling), and crisps flavoured with ume (Japanese plum) – all washed down with Japanese green tea!
Some of the comments from participants included:
"Very original (and delicious!) way to start learning Japanese."
We would like to thank all the participants for coming, and hope that this session has inspired them to learn more about Japanese and Japan!
Photos from the event can be viewed on our Facebook page here.
The British Academy is inviting applications from schools, colleges and other education providers, including supplementary schools, that encourage excellence in language learning. A total of 14 awards of £4,000 will be made to winners around the UK, plus an extra £2,000 for two national winners.
They are looking for exciting projects that encourage larger numbers of students to learn languages to a higher level. They are especially interested to receive applications that teach a wide range of languages or projects that include several languages.
Japanese language learners discovered how to express what their favourite songs mean to them at this year's first Japanese Plus course for advanced learners of Japanese, which ran 1st – 9th April.
The course, attended by 28 participants in total over the course of two weeks, was led by the Japan Foundation's Chief Japanese Language Advisor, Makoto Netsu. In the first week, Netsu-sensei taught useful vocabulary and grammar structures for describing music and the feelings it evokes, and encouraged participants to talk to one another about their favourite song and artist. The participants then had the opportunity to put their new Japanese to the test by introducing their favourite song and Facebook, and share their opinions about each other's musical preferences. In the second session, the participants examined each other's Facebook comments and learned about the many ways people can express their feelings and opinions on the internet, including "Net Slang." Finally, all participants were encouraged to continue their studies at home, by joining Japanese online music communities and chatting to others in Japanese on the net.
Some of the comments participants gave about the course included:
"It was just the right level for me. I enjoyed talking to others in my group."
We'd like to thank all participants for taking part in Japanese Plus, and we hope to see more people take part in our next course!
To learn more about Japanese Plus, please click here.
The Japan Webpage Contest for Schools 2014-15, which had taken place over the past six months, finally came to its conclusion at the Award Ceremony on March 28th at the Institute of Education in London.
Five schools had won prizes in the contest – Bexley Grammar School, Greenford High School, Hockerill Anglo-European College, Holbrook Primary School, and Prince Rock Primary School. The winner of the Gold Prize, taking home £1,000 worth of prizes, was Hockerill Anglo-European College for their website "Japanese at Hockerill" which the judges described as "a must-see website for all teachers and learners of Japanese." Greenford High School were awarded the Silver Prize, worth £600, for "Admire Japan," which appealed to the judges as "its attractive and easy-to-browse layout was combined with a wide breadth of excellent ideas and resources." Holbrook Primary School won the £200-value for the Bronze Prize for "Japan Year," which impressed the judges with "its excellent use of multimedia, including fantastic performances of songs and videos in Japanese by the pupils."
Prince Rock Primary School's "Japanese Club" and Bexley Grammar School's "BGS Japanese Website" won the Primary and Secondary School Public Vote Awards, respectively.
Full details about the winning schools can be downloaded below. All websites that entered the competition can be viewed at the Japan Webpage Contest for Schools website, www.japanwebpagecontest.org.uk.
After receiving the awards, each school had the opportunity to present their websites and their Japanese and Japan-related projects. It was wonderful to hear how much effort both staff and students had put into their work, and to see them present with such enthusiasm.
We would like to thank all schools and supporters for their participation in this contest, and hope that all the schools continue their excellent Japan-related projects and inspire others!
This contest was supported by the Association for Language Learning (ALL), the British Council, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Japan Centre, JP Books and the Japan Society.
Photos from the event can be viewed on our Facebook page here
The event was also reported in the Wiltshire Times.
On March 3rd 2015 over 60 participants joined the Japan Conference for Schools, held at the Embassy of Japan in London. Co-organised by the Embassy of Japan, the Japan Foundation and the Japan Society, the event was an opportunity for teachers to network and share practical ideas about projects for introducing Japanese into their schools or to enhance their existing Japan-related activities.
Participants were welcomed to the Embassy by Minister Hideki Asari, Director of the Japan Information and Cultural Centre (JICC). This was followed by a key note speech by Lorraine Cooper, Deputy Head at Maryland Primary School about her fascinating educational research project. She visited Japan with her Headteacher, Lorna Jackson, as part of their research into critical thinking skills. It was very interesting to hear about what they learnt from Japanese schools, and how they have adapted these ideas to change some policies in their East London school and in the wider educational community.
This thought-provoking key note speech was followed by two workshops. Attendees were able to choose from the following:
A Japanese lunch was then followed by two sessions of small panel discussions, where attendees could join groups and learn more on the topic they were most interested in. This year the topics were things such as school linking, sharing teaching ideas, teaching Japanese to dyslexic students and introducing the Japan Foundation's Key Stage 2 Scheme of Work.
The event was closed with a few words from the Deputy Director of the Japan Foundation London, Tomoki Akazawa. This year the conference had a good mix of both primary and secondary schools, and was also a mix of schools that teach Japanese already, schools that are hoping to start as well as schools that run Japan related activities as clubs or as cross-curricular activities.
Katy Simpson from Dartford Grammar School commented "The conference has inspired me to be creative! The whole day was a fantastic opportunity to network and share knowledge and ideas on how to inspire our students." Another participant mentioned the event was "Extremely informative with fantastic ideas for teaching Japanese. I was really surprised by the abundance of teaching materials and funding opportunities".
Thank you to all the participants, speakers and the other organisers for making the conference such a success. We hope to see you again next year!
On March 22nd 2015, 33 children and grown-ups came along to a special "Japanese for Juniors" workshop held at Conway Hall by the Japan Foundation London, in which they took on the challenge of learning about the Japanese language while creating their own Japanese hanko stamps!
The workshop instructor, Mio Tsunematsu, began with explaining the three different writing systems of Japanese (hiragana, katakana and kanji) and their origin. The participants learnt that many kanji are derived from pictures of the things they represent, and attempted a puzzle in which they had to match the picture with the right kanji. The children were then given a special Japanese toy, "moji-bakeru," which are plastic kanji characters representing animal names that can be reconstructed into a model of the animals themselves!
After transforming their moji-bakeru, the participants then learned how to write their names in katakana characters, and finally set about creating hanko stamps by carving their katakana names into erasers. It was quite hard work, but when the children came to stamp their names with ink, the results were fantastic!
The children, parents and all other participants really enjoyed learning Japanese and making hanko. Some of their feedback included:
"We learnt a lot about the Japanese language and had a lot of fun."
We would like to thank everyone who came to our workshop – ARIGATOU GOZAIMASHITA!
You can view photos from the event on our Facebook page here.
Approximately 25 teachers of Japanese learned how to employ ICT in creating fun and effective teaching resources at the "Make Your Own Japanese Teaching Resources with PowerPoint" seminars held at Japan Foundation London on February 19th and 20th.
Led by Hisaka Bunting, teacher of GCSE and A-level Japanese at Newstead Wood School and teacher of Japanese at several other schools, the seminar demonstrated how teachers can use Microsoft PowerPoint to enhance beginner-level Japanese classes. Giving real life examples from her own classes, Bunting-sensei provided step-by-step instruction on making effective and entertaining presentations, games and activities with PowerPoint. Participants were not only able to make their own PowerPoint resources in the session, but also had the opportunity to share their resources with each other.
Some of the feedback received from the workshop included:
"Excellent workshop...JF staff really helped and the lecturer gave us brilliant resources." (Kazuko Gibson Koike)
"It was excellent, well-structured and fun." (Angelica Kurtina)
We would like to thank Hisaka Bunting and all the participants for their contributions to the event.
On February 28th 2015, the Finals Day of the Tenth Japanese Speech Contest for University Students was held at Regent's University London, showcasing six individual speeches, five individual presentations and four group presentations by UK university students.
The day began with the Individual Presentation category finalists, all of whom are studying Japanese at post-beginner level. The presentations were all of a very high standard and it was very difficult for the judges to decide the winner. However, the first prize eventually went to Ying Liu, a 2nd year student from the University of Nottingham, for her powerful and moving presentation on "Homeless dogs in China." In second place was Daren Sin, a 2nd year student at Imperial College London, for his fascinating speech entitled "Singlish: A language of Singapore." Commenting on the reasons for choosing this subject, Daren said, "I ultimately chose to discuss about Singlish, because I thought it makes us unique from other cultures, like how I can easily identify Singaporeans in the UK from the way they speak!"
The Individual Presentation Category was followed by the Speech Category. All six finalists demonstrated not only exceptional Japanese ability, but also a great degree of insight and knowledge of their chosen subjects. After much deliberation, first prize was awarded to Ash Leigh Spreadbury, a 4th year student at the University of Sheffield, for his thought-provoking speech on "Globalisation and English Curriculum in Japan." The second prize was awarded to Sakari Mesimäki, a 4th year student at the University of Cambridge, for his passionate speech on the theme of "Burikko vs. 'Career woman' - How Japan's culture of cute is getting in the way." The third prize was awarded to Jason Peter Fernandes, who was also a finalist last year; this time, he spoke on the topic of "The portrayal of women in the Japanese media."
On explaining why he decided to enter the contest, Sakari Mesimäki commented, "I enjoy all sorts of performing and have had some success with giving speeches before, so I thought I would give it a go. It's a good opportunity to practice Japanese too of course. And the prizes are amazing - that definitely motivated me to enter!"
This year's Group Presentation Category gave beginner-level students the chance to give presentations on a topic of their choice. The four outstanding groups that made it through to Saturday's finals were chosen from an initial 25 applications, and represented Imperial College London, SOAS University of London, the University of Nottingham and the University of Birmingham. They gave talks on "An Introduction to Malaysian Culture and Traditions," "Tourism in different countries," "Funeral customs – differences between the north and south of China," and "The Cadbury family's Chocolate village." These groups were not placed individually, but instead received special prizes based on their chosen topics.
Nikita Kamraj, who was part of one of the Group Presentation Category teams, said, "I found the whole experience incredibly enjoyable - from the initial preparation right up until the end of Finals Day. I had formed strong friendships with the all the members in my group, and whilst preparing for the contest was tiring at times, working together made it an overall fun (and less daunting!) experience. Finals day itself was an exhilarating experience, and it was great to see the support from both my past and present Japanese teachers."
The full results of the contest can be downloaded below.
As a special treat to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Speech Contest, the audience were entertained by the traditional Japanese music and dancing of London Okinawa Sanshinkai – and some members of the audience even got up on stage to dance!
We would like to thank all participants, their teachers and supporters, the judges, audience members and BATJ for making the contest such a success. In addition, special thanks must go to the generous sponsors: Baker & McKenzie LLP, Bloomberg LP, Central Japan Railway Company, Gendai Travel Limited, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Japan Airlines, Japan Centre, JP Books, Oxford Brooks University, Regent's University London, Ricoh UK Ltd and Toshiba of Europe Ltd.
We would like to encourage as many undergraduate students of Japanese language as possible to apply for next year's contest! Finally, you may be interested in attending the Japan Webpage Contest for Schools 2014-15 Award Ceremony and Presentation Evening on March 28th.
The Japan Foundation London were sad to say sayoonara to Senior Japanese Language Advisor Dr Seiji Fukushima, who transferred to Japan last month. Here is a message from Fukushima-sensei:
"On the 7th of February, I returned to Japan after working for four years in London. I would like to thank everyone in the UK who aided and assisted me in so many ways over those four years.
During the latter half of my time here, I frequently visited a primary school in West London in order to create primary education materials. The primary pupils were tremendously frank, participating eagerly if the lesson was interesting, or starting to play amongst themselves if it was not. But when they were interested, their learning ability was truly amazing. I hope that more and more children at more and more primary schools discover their own capabilities, and learn about the wider world, through learning about Japanese language and culture.
Thank you once again, everyone. Wherever you are in the world, I look forward to the day when we can meet again."
Taking over from Fukushima-sensei, we are delighted to welcome Makoto Netsu. Here is a message from Netsu-sensei:
"My name is Makoto Netsu, and I arrived in London in January as the Japan Foundation's new Chief Japanese Language Advisor, succeeding Seiji Fukushima. Previously, I have worked on teacher training programs at the Japanese-Language Institute, Urawa in Saitama city. I have also worked for the Japan Foundation at their offices in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur. My particular focus is on Japanese language education in primary and secondary schools, cross-curricular links between this and other subjects, ICT, and learning Japanese as a heritage language. I am very happy to be able to begin work with teachers in the UK. Thank you."
Dr Seiji Fukushima, the Chief Language Advisor for Japan Foundation London, has spent the last 4 years researching and teaching in London. For his final seminar in the UK, 58 attendees joined Dr Fukushima on the 20th of January 2015, to hear about the possibilities for Japanese language education in UK primary schools.
On 29th November 2014, the Japan Foundation London in conjunction with the British Association for Teaching Japanese as a foreign language (BATJ) held a seminar on using JF Standard as an assessment tool in Japanese language education. This was led by Mayumi Mitsuya, Japanese Language Senior Specialist at Japanese Cultural Institute, the Japan Foundation Rome, and was attended by approximately 20 teachers.
In the first part of the seminar, Mitsuya-sensei and the participants looked at different tests for assessing competence in accomplishing tasks, and examined what should assessed and by what criteria. This was followed by a workshop in which participants considered simple exam questions for measuring competence in accomplishing tasks and created a rubric to assess them. Participants also discussed what kinds of assessment can be used in their own classes and what form this assessment can take.
All the participants found the seminar helpful to their teaching strategies. Some of their comments included:
("I'm currently teaching with the Marugoto textbooks and needed to establish a form of assessment so this workshop was really useful. There were plenty of ideas that I feel I could use straight away.")
("I didn't actually know much about JF Standard previously but now I feel that I really understand it. ")
("It was really useful to be able to discuss the difference between language activities and assessing language competence based on examples of actual students' work.")
We would like to thank Mitsuya-sensei for her enlightening talk, and all our participants for coming and their enthusiastic contribution to the discussions.
Ofsted have reacted very positively after observing a Japanese language class at Madley Primary school in Herefordshire. The school received the following comments in their Ofsted report:
"Pupils explore various religions and cultures, and have direct links with a range of schools around the world. This was typified by a lesson where pupils were being taught Japanese. Not only were they learning the language, but also aspects of Japanese customs and traditions. Such opportunities have resulted in pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development being a strength of the school."
Madley Primary school started teaching Japanese this year after the headteacher, Lee Batstone, attended and was inspired by the Japan Conference for Schools, held at the Embassy of Japan in March 2014. The school started teaching a Japanese club and has maintained a link with a school in Japan for over a year. More recently Japanese has been linked into the curricular themes, and Japanese lessons have been introduced across Years 4 and 5. Mr Batstone also took part in the Japan Foundation's recent Japan Group Tour Programme for UK Head Teachers, which he described as a "phenomenal experience," that "really cemented why I think Japanese is a good language to teach".
As part of the Japan Foundation's Primary Japanese Campaign to support and encourage primary schools teaching Japanese language, we took 19 headteachers to Japan from October 25th to November 1st 2014 to give them the chance to learn more about Japan and the Japanese education system.
The programme included a whole range of Japanese cultural experiences to help deepen the headteachers' understanding of Japan. They saw Japan's modern side with a visit to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (known as Miraikan), spent some time near the giant robot-like gundam in Diver City, Tokyo and rode on Japan's fastest train, the shinkansen. In Kyoto, they were able to experience Japan's more traditional side, as they explored the areas around Kiyomizudera temple and Yasaka shrine on the East side of Kyoto.
The headteachers also spoke to the Deputy Assistant Vice-Minister, Mr Ken Okaniwa, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They also visited the British Council in Tokyo. Lastly, they enjoyed inspiring seminars from Lori Henderson MBE, Executive Director of British Chamber of Commerce who spoke about business in Japan, as well as Professor Mark Langager of the International Christian University, who spoke about the Japanese education system.
The highlights of the programme were the visits to two Japanese schools, Fujimi Elementary School in Tokyo and Ooyake Elementary School in Kyoto. The UK headteachers had the chance to observe the Japanese education system first-hand, as they took part in English classes, observed a whole range of lessons, and spoke to the Japanese teachers. One headteacher said the following; "the two school visits were inspirational and it was delightful to meet such lovely staff. I now am keen to develop the project further to have a link school in Japan that we can work with."
So far we have had fantastic feedback from the schools involved in this programme. One participant told us "I had some experiences which I will never forget and will talk about for years to come!" While another mentioned that was an "amazing experience, thank you!"
The Japan Foundation would like to thank all the headteachers for joining us, as well as ANA (All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd) and Mitsubishi Corporation International (Europe) Plc for their generous support for this Programme. If you would like to see some further photos from this trip, they are available on the Japan Foundation's facebook page here.
On the 22nd October 2014, 16 teachers of Japanese attended a seminar to learn more about WJEC's Japanese Language Units. These qualifications can enhance Japanese language lessons by giving pupils the opportunity to gain formal recognition for their learning. The WJEC Language Units are small bite-sized QCF (Qualifications and Credit Framework) qualifications which enable learners to demonstrate their competence and progress by producing evidence in the classroom, rather than taking exams.
The workshop started with an overview about the support, funding and resources that are freely available for teachers of Japanese in the UK. This was followed by the introductory assessor training course from Claire Parry, the WJEC Vocational Qualifications Subject Officer. Claire spoke about the qualifications, and explained how to adapt the context and focus of the evidence to fit in with any school's curriculum. Lastly Tadashi Sakai, a Japanese teacher from Wolverhampton High School for Girls, introduced the resources that he has been using to teach Japanese for these qualifications. These resources were created with Funding from the Japan Foundation's Local Project Support Programme, and will soon be available (for free) from the WJEC website.
If you were unable to join us for this event, but you are interested in using these qualifications to accredit the Japanese language learning at your school, Claire Parry will be running other sessions to introduce these qualifications in Birmingham on 5th February 2015 and in Plymouth on 21st April 2015. You can find out more information here.
The Institut Français, the Japan Foundation London and Network for Languages have created a new resource to support high-level language learning in the UK. This resource will help support students that study French at AS and A level in order to improve their oral communication in French while at the same time, widen students' language skills to include basic Japanese. The resource can be used as part of a programme will include intensive day(s) dedicated to languages within the students' curriculum.
We are now looking for schools that teach A-level French that might be interested in taking part in the programme. Their students will have the chance to improve their French, by using their French language skills as a tool to learn basic Japanese. Students will also be given the chance to explore both French and Japanese culture. Teachers do not need any proficiency in Japanese to take part in this project.
The resources are available to download below, or you can also find the on the culturetheque website from Institut français du Royaume-Uni. Please let us know what you think!
Download Attachment
A big thank you to everyone who visited the Japan Foundation's stand at the Language Show Live on the 17th, 18th and 19th October at Olympia.
Held once a year, the Language Show is the UK's biggest event for language learners, teachers, linguists and anyone with a passion for languages. The Japan Foundation's stand gave visitors a chance to experience Japanese language and culture, including writing their name in Japanese.
On Friday, for the first time, the Japan Foundation held a presentation on kami-shibai (a traditional form of Japanese story-telling with pictures), and how this can be used effectively to teach not only Japanese, but any foreign language. This presentation used resources from the newly-developed Japanese Language Scheme of Work for Primary Schools, and Japanese Taster Lesson Sample Activity Pack.
On Saturday, we held a Japanese Language Taster session led by the Japan Foundation's Assistant Japanese Language Advisor, Mio Tsunematsu. It was attended by enthusiastic language learners of all ages, who learned basic Japanese greetings and the writing system.
Finally, on Sunday, we were very lucky to be joined by Crispin Chambers, Head of Japanese at Tavistock College and winner of the Pearson National Teaching Award of Teacher of the Year in a Secondary School for his work in Japanese. He held a seminar on encouraging students to study languages by introducing them to less common, non-European languages (such as Japanese).
Additionally, we held a Japan Quiz, which approximately 700 people entered.
The answers to the quiz were as follows:
1. Japan is in which continent? a) Europe b) Asia c) Oceania
2. What Hollywood film was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's classic Japanese film 'Seven Samurai'? a) The Magnificent Seven b) King Kong c) Jurassic Park
3. The kanji (Japanese character) 言means "words," and the kanji 舌 means "tongue." What do you think their combination, 話, means? a) To taste b) To read c) To speak
4. What is Japan's famous high-speed train, the Shinkansen, also known as? a) The Bullet-Train b) The Maglev c) The TGV
Out of those who answered the quiz correctly, we picked five at random to send our Japan Foundation Goody Bag. Congratulations to Luke O'Donovan, Michal Dzienio, Brigitte Barrett, David Bonnano and Honorata Radwanska who have all been sent Goody Bags!
We would like to thank Crispin Chambers and all our Japanese Taster for Schools volunteers who generously donated their time and expertise for the show. Domo arigato gozaimashita!
Japan Foundation will also be attending the Language Show in 2015, on October 16th, 17th and 18th at the Olympia, London. We hope to see you there!
Japan Matsuri returned to Trafalgar Square in London on Saturday 27th September 2014. This popular annual festival brings members of the Japanese community and Londoners together to enjoy the many aspects of Japan with Japanese food, music, dance and other activities.
The Japan Foundation ran a stall at the festival providing information about studying Japanese in the UK, useful handouts about our support for schools and details about all of our upcoming events. In addition, we held a Japan Quiz, which over 600 people entered.
The answers to the quiz were as follows:
1. Japan is in which continent? a) Europe b) Asia c) Oceania
2. What Hollywood film was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's classic Japanese film 'Seven Samurai'? a) The Magnificent Seven b) King Kong c) Jurassic Park
3. The kanji (Japanese character) 言means "words," and the kanji 舌 means "tongue." What do you think their combination, 話, means? a) To taste b) To read c) To speak
4. What is Japan's famous high-speed train, the Shinkansen, also known as? a) The Bullet-Train b) The Maglev c) The TGV
Out of those who answered the quiz correctly, we picked four at random to send our Japan Foundation Goody Bag. Congratulations to the four winners M.F Stringfellow from Brighton, , and Melissa Schuh, Samantha Junak and Ashaar Shaikh all from London, who have now been sent their good bags!
The application forms for the Japanese Studies Fellowship Programme 2015 have now been released.
To receive an application form or to learn more about the programme contact Hal Parker or visit the programme list on our Tokyo site.
Application deadline: 1st December, 2014.
Please discuss your eligibility with the Japan Foundation before applying.
On September 12th 2014, 20 current and prospective volunteers attended a Training Day for the Japan Foundation's Japanese Taster for Schools (JTS) Programme, in which native and fluent Japanese speakers conduct free Japanese taster sessions in UK schools.
After an overview for new volunteers about the Japan Foundation and the JTS programme itself, the participants heard a report from a volunteer who had held a recent Japanese language taster at the Charter School, a secondary school in London. This taster had proved to be challenging yet rewarding, and the participants found it really useful to hear about the volunteer's real-life experiences.
This was followed by workshops by Hiroko Tanaka (Japanese Language Advisor and co-ordinator of JTS at the Japan Foundation), who introduced a number of enjoyable activities that volunteers could use in their own taster sessions. These included using the "Hiragana Rap" to learn the basic sounds of the Japanese language, playing matching pairs and board games to learn vocabulary, and the highly energetic game "Fruit Basket," similar to "Musical Chairs" but great for practicing new Japanese words. Several of the activities introduced came from Japan Foundation's own online resources, including Ready Steady NihonGO! , JFL Japanese Scheme of Work for primary schools and the draft version of the Japanese Taster Lesson Resource Activity Pack.
All the volunteers enjoyed the training day and said that they found it useful. Shraddha Payyapilly, who was attending the training day for the first time, said, "I have learnt about so many simple, easy and extremely effective techniques about teaching Japanese. I am extremely grateful and happy to be allowed as a part of this training day. Special thanks to Tanaka sensei. She is very motivating and kind."
Yasue Gunji, another newcomer to the JTS Training Day, commented:
("I really enjoyed learning about teaching Japanese taster sessions. The sessions where we got to move around were particularly fun. It was good to learn about the characteristics of British schools and how different age groups react to the tasters.")
We would like to thank all participants for coming, especially our guest speaker!
If you are interested in taking part in the JTS programme as a volunteer, please click here for more information.
The Japan Foundation is now accepting proposals for projects to receive Performing Arts Japan Programme for Europe (PAJ Europe) Touring and Collaboration grants for the 2015-2016 fiscal year. To apply for the programme, please read the information on the Performing Arts Funding page carefully and contact the relevant Japan Foundation office in Europe to discuss eligibility. The deadline for projects taking place between 1 April 2015 and 30 June 2016, is 30 October 2014.
Performing Arts Japan Programme for Europe (PAJ Europe) was started by the Japan Foundation in 2006 to revitalise and facilitate the exchange between leading artists in Europe and Japan. The main feature of this scheme is that this grant will be made available to those organisers based in Europe who are planning to organise Japan-related performing arts projects in European regions. The applications will be screened by an annually appointed panel of advisors who are specialists in the area of performing arts in Europe. Successful applicants will receive grants towards part of the cost of implementing their project.
To date, PAJ Europe has funded 109 projects (including 62 touring and 47 collaboration projects) of Japanese performing arts in both traditional and contemporary art forms. In the 2014-2015 fiscal year, 12 projects (7 touring and 5 collaboration projects) were selected under the programme, for a total amount of 142,000 euros.
From August 18th – 20th 2014, 13 intermediate and advanced speakers of Japanese came to the annual Japanese Refresher Course for Teachers to refresh their Japanese before the start of the new school year. This year's attendees were non-native Japanese language teachers from a wide range of teaching backgrounds, from private tutors to secondary school teachers.
This year's theme was 「学ぼう!教室活動のネタ」- "Tips for class activities." The aim of the course was to explore various classroom activities and ideas for teaching Japanese, while at the same time brushing up on the teachers' own Japanese language ability. Lead by the Japan Foundation's Japanese Language Advisors, Dr Seiji Fukushima, Ms Hiroko Tanaka and Ms Mio Tsunematsu, the course gave participants the opportunity to explore all different kinds of teaching methods.
The course began with a look at some of the useful resources available for teaching Japanese – Reading Tutor and OJAD – followed by an introduction to teaching Japanese onomatopoeia using manga. This was followed by sessions on teaching Japanese using kinaesthetic learning; employing movement, dance and songs in order to re-enforce learning. Finally, participants presented their own tips for teaching Japanese
All participants enjoyed not only exploring teaching methods, but also the opportunity to network and practice their Japanese with fellow Japanese teachers. Some of the comments we received from participants included:
"Very useful practice. Excellent tips from JF staff, especially on grammar and very resourceful participants."
"Very good balance of activities: song/dance/manga/grammar etc, targeting a wide range of age groups and abilities." (Forum Mithani, Westminster Kingsway College)
"Overall, this was an excellent course. I would recommend it to all teachers of Japanese." (Robert Fox, Aston University)
We would like to thank all participants for coming to the Refresher Course, and really hope to see them again at future events. お疲れ様でした!
You can download files from the Refresher Course below
Ishinomaki is a city in Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, and is one of the areas that suffered severe damage due to the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. As they began to rebuild, the children of Ishinomaki published Ishinomaki Hibi Kodomo Shinbun; a newspaper created by the children that reports the current activities in their city.
On May 10th 2014, the Japan Foundation London held a second translation event with the Ishinomaki Hibi Kodomo Shinbun; a newspaper created by Japanese schoolchildren that reports the current activities in their city. Ishinomaki is a city in Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, and is one of the areas that suffered severe damage due to the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The children created their newspaper one year after the disaster, and now, three years on from the tsunami, the children aim to tell Ishinomaki's story to people all over the world. To bring this goal to fruition, 32 volunteers spent their Saturday morning translating articles from the newspaper into English. You can read a little more about the event here.
Now, the children are ready to tell Ishinomaki's story to people all over the world. All the translated articles are available on the Ishinomaki Kodomo Shinbun website (click here to read more in English, or here for the Japanese website.) They also have a twitter feed, which you can follow here. We hope you will enjoy their articles in English. The Japanese versions of these article are not published online, however if you are interested in reading the latest copy of the Ishinomaki Hibi Kodomo Shinbun, there are still some copies available at the Japan Foundation London, just outside the library.
We would like once again to thank all volunteers for giving up their time on this project, and to the organisers and children at Ishinomaki for their very genki participation!
A big thank you to the 2,000 visitors who came to the Japan Foundation's stand at Hyper Japan on the 25th, 26th and 27th July 2014.
HYPER JAPAN is the UK's biggest celebration of Japanese culture, Japanese cuisine, and Japanese cool. The Japan Foundation London's stand gave visitors a chance to find out more about Japanese arts and culture, and studying Japanese language.
One of the highlights of our stand was our Japan Quiz, which around 1,300 people entered.
The answers to the quiz were as follows:
1. Japan is in which continent? a) Europe b) Asia c) Oceania
2. What Hollywood film was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's classic Japanese film 'Seven Samurai'? a) The Magnificent Seven b) King Kong c) Jurassic Park
3. The kanji (Japanese character) 言means "words," and the kanji 舌 means "tongue." What do you think their combination, 話, means? a) To taste b) To read c) To speak
4. What is Japan's famous high-speed train, the Shinkansen, also known as? a) The Bullet-Train b) The Maglev c) The TGV
Out of those who answered the quiz correctly, only five people could win the Japan Foundation goody bag. The lucky five were Simon, Kristian and Edward from London, Roshni from Middlesex and Lynn from Essex. Well done to them!
Don't forget that the Japan Foundation will be at Alcon (Anime League's Anime & Gaming convention at De Montford University) on September 6th and 7th, and at Japan Matsuri at Trafalgar Square on September 27th. We hope to see you there!
Yokohama Triennale 2014, the fifth edition of the Yokohama Triennale, will open from 1 August to 3 November 2014, and welcomes the artist Yasumasa Morimura as its artistic director. This year's exhibition "ART Fahrenheit 451: Sailing into the sea of oblivion", which takes its title from Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel Farenheit 451, aims to explore the sea of "oblivion" by means of a ship called "art," in a voyage along with all those who believe in the possibility of artistic adventure and those who seek out a bold view of the world.
For full details, please visit the Yokohama Triennale 2014 website.
The Japan Foundation is delighted to announce that artist Chiharu Shiota will represent Japan at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, to be held from 9 May to 22 November 2015. Shiota will present the exhibition entitled 'The Key in the Hand', curated by Hitoshi Nakano, Curator of the Kanagawa Arts Foundation. Through her work Shiota, who gave an artist talk at the Japan Foundation, London in 2013, explores questions such as "What does it mean to be alive?" and "What is existence?" in large-scale installations that make use of a variety of media including sculptural elements, photography, and video.
For more information about the exhibition, please visit: http://2015.veneziabiennale-japanpavilion.jp/ (Japanese)
The Japan Foundation has organised Japan's national participation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, which will be held from 7 June through to 23 November 2014. This year, for the very first time, all of the national pavilions at the biennale have been invited to adopt and explore the same theme; 'Absorbing Modernity: 1914‐2014'. The Japan Pavilion which has been commissioned by Kayoko Ota, Exhibition Organiser and Editor, will convey the strength and historical depth of Japanese architecture, telling the story of the architectural development of Japan over a hundred years.
For more information about the Architectural Biennale, please visit: http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/
The Japan Foundation recently invited the sociologist and rising star of Japanese academia Hiroshi Kainuma (University of Tokyo/Fukushima University) to the UK to give a mini lecture series on his latest research.
Lecture 1: 'Voices from Fukushima - sketching a future beyond the pro/anti-nuclear debate' (Held at the Japan Foundation, London, and the University of Sheffield on 20th and 22nd January respectively)
In his first lecture, Fukushima-native Kainuma explored the historical background and development of the nuclear power industry in Fukushima, before moving on to discuss the experiences and opinions of those whose lives have been directly affected by the ongoing nuclear crisis. He ended his talk by offering new directions for future debates that move beyond a simple pro/anti-nuclear dichotomy. Following Kainuma's presentation, Dr Peter Wynn Kirby (University of Oxford) introduced his research into radioactive citizenship in Fukushima and Japan more broadly, before joining Kainuma in discussion.
Lecture 2: 'On the Margins in Japan - Voices from the Underclass, Sex Industry, Far-right and New Left' (Held at The University of Edinburgh, and the Japan Foundation, London on 21st and 23rd January respectively)
In his second lecture, Kainuma revealed another side to modern Japan through a series of case studies examining those people/groups living on the fringes of Japanese society. Kainuma's talk was followed by an incisive commentary from discussant Dr Tuukka Toivonen (Goldsmiths, University of London/Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford) and a lively Q&A session with questions directed at both speakers.
We would like to thank Mr Kainuma for making the long trip to the UK to give such a fascinating and thought-provoking series of lectures, and we very much hope to see him in the UK again soon. We would also like to express our gratitude to the University of Edinburgh and University of Sheffield for kindly agreeing to co-host the regional seminars.
**If you would like to receive Mr Kainuma's PowerPoint presentations, please contact Hal Parker at the following address: firstname.lastname@example.com
The Japan Foundation was delighted to present this book launch and talk on the highly-regarded new publication, Aesthetic Strategies of the Floating World. We were joined by the book's author, Afred Haft (British Museum), who examined how the Floating World responded to the authority of Japan's classical tradition, and made ukiyo-e (popular woodblock prints) an agent in the social and cultural politics of their time. Following Haft's talk, Tim Clark (British Museum) and Dr Christine Guth (Royal College of Art) gave incisive and thought-provoking commentaries on the book, before the panel took questions from the audience in what was a lively and interesting Q&A session.
We had a full house for this event and the Japan Foundation would like to thank all those that came along and helped to make this such a successful evening.
Image: Fûryû yatsushi Genji: Matsuzake Chôbunsai Eishi circa 1790, collection of the British Museum
The Japan Foundation, in collaboration with the Royal Mint Museum, was delighted to present this special public seminar (held on 13th June) exploring the rich history of exchange between Japan and the UK in the area of mint. Yoshiake Shinhara, President of the Japan Mint, gave a detailed and informative talk focussing on the UK's contribution to the establishment of the Japan Mint and the close ties that developed between Japan and the UK in the area of mint in the late 19th century. Shinhara was joined by Graham Dyer OBE FSA of the Royal Mint Museum who provided a British perspective on these ties, and Dr Helen Wang (Curator of East Asian Coins, British Museum) who wrapped things up with an engaging presentation in which she introduced some of the coins that were in circulation in Japan and the UK around the time of the Japan Mint's inception.
Thursday 10th January saw the return of our annual Post-Graduate Workshop, organised in collaboration with the British Association of Japanese Studies (BAJS). Responding to feedback received following last year's event, this year's workshop gave participants the opportunity to present their research and receive feedback from fellow PhD students and senior colleagues. In all, six current PhD students presented their research - Alice Freeman (University of Oxford), Anna Seabourne (University of Manchester), Mark Donoghue (University of the Arts, London), Nicolas Garvizu (University of Sheffield), Robert Horn (University of Sheffield), and Takahiro Yamamoto (London School of Economics). Following these presentations, Prof Chris Hughes, President of BAJS, gave a training session on 'looking for work, job applications and interviews'. The day finished with a session on 'funding your research' which featured presentations by Susan Meehan (Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation), Stephen McEnally (Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation), Junichi Kumagai (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and Prof Ian Neary (Japan Foundation Endowment Committee). We would like to thank all participants for coming along and making the day a great success. We hope to see you all again next year!
Prof Akira Baba delivering his lecture on the Japanese video game industry
Following his lecture on the current situation and problems of the Japanese video game industry held at the Japan Foundation last February, we are pleased to announce the publication of Prof Akira Baba's article 'Videogames - A Shared Culture Thriving in Japan and the United Kingdom'. Please click here to view this article.
Please see the document below for a detailed report of our recent events looking at Creative Industries in East and Southeast Asia - an academic conference here at the Japan Foundation on Friday 29th June and a public symposium at Richmix Cinema on Saturday 30th June.
The Japan Foundation is proud to announce that the artist Koki Tanaka will represent Japan for the Japan Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Based in Los Angeles, Tanaka's diverse art practices spans many media, revealing the multiple contexts latent in the most simple of everyday acts, and his work has been widely shown both in and outside Japan. The curator representing Japan will be Mika Kuraya, Chief Curator of the Department of Fine Arts, The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo.
News Archive
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PASADENA, Calif.- Seeing a burgeoning new research field at the interface of biology and engineering, the Benjamin M. Rosen Family Foundation of New York has donated $18 million to the California Institute of Technology to establish the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center.
"Ben and Donna Rosen are recognizing how critical bioengineering is to the future of Caltech, science, and society, and they also appreciate the power an endowment can have in sustaining such an initiative," said Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau. "The Institute is fortunate to have them as friends."
The Rosen Center will advance both basic scientific exploration and development of engineering analysis and synthetic approaches. Innovations in these areas are resulting in rugged and inexpensive diagnostic devices, in new insights into the functioning of the heart, and in the engineering of molecular devices capable of recognizing and responding to disease processes in individual cells.
Bioengineering developed at Caltech in recognition of the fact that biology is becoming more accessible to approaches that are commonly used in engineering, including mathematical modeling, systems theory, computation, and abstraction-based synthesis. At each level of organization, from the molecule to the cell to the organ, the accelerating pace of discovery in the biological sciences reveals new design principles that are of fundamental importance in understanding living organisms, and that will have important practical applications in future synthetic biological and biomedical systems and devices.
"Bioengineering arose at Caltech from the grassroots efforts of a handful of committed faculty coming together to establish a graduate option with great enthusiasm," said Scott Fraser, the Anna L. Rosen Professor of Biology and professor of bioengineering, who will lead the new center. "This gift will endow the program allowing it to foster the most innovative collaborative research. Such funding fuels innovation by offering support to venturesome efforts far earlier than would be possible through conventional granting agencies."
"There are a few times in history when diverse sciences, technologies and researchers fortuitously come together at the same time and at the same place to make possible great achievements for mankind," said Rosen. "This is one of those times, and Caltech is one of those places. We're honored to be able to play a small part in helping start this exciting new Caltech Bioengineering Initiative."
According to Ed Stolper, Caltech's provost, "Our current challenge is to provide an intellectual and programmatic focus for our growing teaching and research programs in bioengineering, spanning synthetic, systems, and computational biology; biomechanics and bio-inspired design; and development of novel biotechnologies. The Rosen Center will provide such a focus and critical support for these activities, which span many of the Institute's existing programs."
"Caltech's Bioengineering Center will foster the foundational work that will blossom into the next generation of tissue regeneration and diagnostic instrumentation," said Fraser. "The results of these innovations will make tools once considered too futuristic for anything but science fiction films into practical devices that can be carried in a physician's rear pocket."
Ben Rosen was founding chairman of Compaq Computer Corp. and a founding partner of Sevin Rosen Funds, a venture capital firm that has provided initial financing for more than 100 technology companies. Previously, he was vice president and senior electronics analyst at Morgan Stanley & Co., and before that he was an electronics engineer at Raytheon and Sperry Gyroscope. In 1992, Computerworld chose Rosen as one of 25 people in the computer industry "who changed the world." Rosen joined Caltech's board of trustees in 1986 and became chairman in 2001. He is also a member of the board of overseers and managers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a member of the board of overseers of Columbia Business School, and a director of the New York Philharmonic. Rosen earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Caltech in 1954. He also earned a master's in electrical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Columbia University.
Donna Rosen was the former owner/director of Galerie Simonne Stern in New Orleans for 23 years until she moved to New York in 2002. She pioneered the New Orleans Warehouse District as the "Art District of New Orleans." She is a national trustee of the New Orleans Museum of Art; vice chairman of the board of American Friends of the British Museum; board member of The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Hospital; and trustee of Second Stage Theater.
PASADENA, Calif.--With a $17 million grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the California Institute of Technology becomes one of five new centers of excellence that will focus on the emerging field of predictive science.
Michael Ortiz, the Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics, professor of mechanical engineering, and director of Caltech's new Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP) Center, says Caltech will focus its efforts on the high-energy density dynamic response of materials, with demonstrations of hypervelocity impact response.
Hypervelocity impact is central to a number of scientific and application areas, including the design of protective shields for space structures and the understanding of meteorite impact cratering, Ortiz says. Accurate computer simulation is critical to the understanding of experiments that involve velocities reaching 10 kilometers per second, pressures in the megabar range, and extraordinarily high temperatures and deformation rates.
"The range of complex physics that is set in motion during hypervelocity impact is staggering," Ortiz remarks. "It includes melting, vaporization, and plasmas; hydrodynamic instabilities, mixed-phase flows, and mixing; and fracture, fragmentation, spall, and ejecta.
"The modeling and simulation of each of these phenomena in isolation is a scientific challenge in itself, but the predictive simulation of their coupled integral behavior is truly at the grand-challenge level and provides an exceedingly exacting test of predictive science."
Predictive science is the application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict the behavior of complex systems where routine experiments are not feasible. The research effort, which involves Caltech and four other selected PSAAP centers, will focus on unclassified applications of interest to NNSA and its three national laboratories: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.
"At the core of this game-changing 'predictive science' paradigm shift is the ability to quantify uncertainties in the performance of complex systems by means of concerted and highly integrated experimental, computational, and analytical programs," Ortiz remarks.
The PSAAP centers, named by NNSA on March 7, will develop models and software for their large-scale simulations, as well as methods associated with the emerging disciplines of verification and validation and uncertainty quantification. The centers will be administered by the office of Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC), which has funded the ASC Center at Caltech for the past 10 years.
"Caltech is in a unique position to advance the field of predictive science because of its culture of close interdisciplinary work among its faculty and research groups, exemplified by the highly successful ASC center led by Dan Meiron, and because of its longstanding tradition of approaching modeling and simulation at its most fundamental level," Ortiz says.
Experiments will be performed at experimental facilities in Caltech's Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories (GALCIT), including the newly-constructed Small Particle Hypervelocity Impact Range (SPHIR), notes Ares Rosakis, the von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, professor of mechanical engineering, and director of GALCIT.
The executive director of Caltech's PSAAP Center is Mark Stalzer, executive director of Caltech's Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR). The PSAAP Center will coordinate activities in areas including computational fluid dynamics, led by Dan Meiron, the Jones Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Computer Science; computational science and engineering, led by CACR's principal computational scientist, Michael Aivazis; experimental science, led by Rosakis; solid dynamics and materials, led by Ortiz; and uncertainty quantification, led by Houman Owhadi, assistant professor of applied and computational mathematics and control and dynamical systems.
For further details on PSAAP, visit http://www.sandia.gov/NNSA/ASC/univ/psaap.html.
PASADENA, Calif., and Cape Canaveral, Fl.--On the day that California Institute of Technology mechanical-engineering students will fling projectiles through the air in their annual design competition, two Caltech mechanical-engineering alumni will hurtle through space on the shuttle Endeavor.
The theme of this year's ME 72 Engineering Design Contest, the culmination of an engineering design laboratory for undergraduate students, is "fire and fly." It is fitting for a day on which astronauts and Caltech alumni Garrett Reisman and Robert Behnken lift off on the Endeavor space shuttle as part of a seven-man team en route to the International Space Station. The competition will be held on Tuesday, March 11, at 1 p.m. on Caltech's North Athletic Field, and the shuttle is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Chris Brennen, Caltech's Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, helped guide the ME 72 students through their test phases. He'll be at the shuttle launch on the day of their competition, but he remarks, "I was deeply torn between attending the space-shuttle launch and the ME 72 final contest." Reisman was his former student who became a close friend and married another mechanical engineering grad, Simone Francis.
Reisman, a space station flight engineer, will remain at the International Space Station for about six months and Behnken will return home after 16 days in orbit. A third Caltech alumnus, Greg Chamitoff, will then climb aboard Endeavor for the next launch, scheduled for March 28.
Brennen has close ties to NASA. He advised the agency on the shuttle's liquid-oxygen pumps and developed a lab at Caltech for creating and testing the main engine turbo pumps. When that facility was decommissioned several years ago, NASA disassembled it and moved it to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Brennen has spent much of his career investigating phenomena related to fluid flow, which he says was particularly useful in prepping students for ME 72 this year. "This year's ME 72 is different from previous contests because it involves some aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. It requires significantly more analysis of the mechanics of the device and the flight of the projectile in order to maximize the performance," he says.
On contest day, Brennen leaves the students in the hands of Joel Burdick, a professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering at Caltech, who also helped them prepare. "We've had two contests already and tested and made adjustments. They're ready to go," Brennen says.
The competition centers on two basic constructions. The first is a ground-level launching device. The second is its 50-gram payload, "a projectile or flying device that will rise from a ground-level launcher, fly over a rope hurdle and then glide or be projected as far as possible over clear ground," according to the project description.
What happens after launch will be anybody's guess. In accordance with ME 72 tradition, the students may turn their machines on each other, navigating the airborne projectiles via remote control to tackle opponents' devices. According to the contest rules, "special admiration and an extra bonus" go to those payloads that land in a specially marked, two-meter-wide circular region beyond the basic target zone.
For further contest specifications, visit http://robotics.caltech.edu/~me72/. For more on Endeavor, go to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/.
PASADENA, Calif.--Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new strategy for creating "liquid metal" that makes it able to bend significantly without breaking, while retaining a strength twice that of titanium. It is among the toughest, or least brittle, known materials, and could be used anywhere that strong metal alloys are traditionally found, but may prove most useful in the aerospace industry, where lower density means fuel savings.
When commercialized metallic glass known as Liquidmetal and Vitreloy hit the market several years ago in the forms of golf clubs and baseball bats, it was too brittle to withstand much duress. Now, says Douglas Hofmann, a Caltech materials science graduate student and lead author of a paper presenting the method for making the new material, it can be made to flex and can be produced at relatively low cost. "Metallic glasses now have among the highest toughness of any materials," he says.
Like window glass, metallic glass has no crystalline structure, but it is made with combinations of zirconium, titanium, copper, nickel, platinum, or other metals. Although the random arrangement of elements makes the material as strong as some of the strongest known metals, it also makes it very brittle. Most other metals deform plastically, meaning that under a heavy load, the deformation before ultimate fracture is permanent. Metallic glass behaves like an elastic band, which regains its original shape when released, but snaps when stretched past a certain point. A piece of metallic glass with any substantial thickness shattered easily when it was bent, and, Hofmann points out, "you couldn't build a bridge out of it. It breaks with no visual precursor.
"Many researchers in metallic glasses are trying to make them useful in structural applications," Hofmann says. He and his colleagues at Caltech have finally accomplished exactly that. They experimented with different combinations of metals to create a new version by manipulating the ratios of starting materials. They were guided by previous work by coauthor William Johnson, Caltech's Mettler Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, and his collaborators. Over the past two decades, these scientists had found that ductility--the ability of a material to deform in tension before breaking--was linked to the formation of branching, crystalline structures called dendrites within the metallic glass.
The team experimented first with the size of the dendrites. Hofmann and Johnson started by noting that when metallic glasses are bent, 10-nanometer-wide features called shear bands rip right through glass that is thicker than one millimeter, but are stabilized in thin glass. "The bending experiments told us that the size of the particles we need to add is proportional to the length scale of the shear bands before they become catastrophic," Hofmann describes.
In this time of exploding interest in nanotechnology, Hofmann was surprised to find that the dendrites had to be on the order of hundreds of microns in size, many thousands of times the size of the shear bands. The second major insight was that they also had to be softer than the surrounding metallic glass.
Because they are crystalline, the dendrites deform plastically, and their size blocks a single shear band from growing into a catastrophic crack. "It takes more energy to move a shear band forward than it takes to form a new shear band," notes Hofmann. "We took an alloy that broke with one shear band and made it make countless shear bands.
"We took a metallic glass, which is considered a brittle material, and showed that by making a designed composite out of it, we can span the entire space of toughness," Hofmann remarks. "The tougher it is, the harder it is to drive a crack through it. Now we have ductility and toughness," he claims.
Because the new metallic glass is tough and strong and has relatively low density, its obvious applications would be in any structure that incorporates titanium. In aerospace technology, these properties are crucial to minimizing weight and saving fuel costs.
But, says Hofmann, "we're not trying to replace titanium; we're trying to find applications where a stronger material would be useful," particularly because the material is still difficult to make. Still, he points to one particularly alluring quality: "you can use less of it because it's stronger."
The paper appears in the February 28 issue of the journal Nature. All experiments were performed in Caltech's Keck Laboratory of Engineering Materials. The other authors are material scientists Jin-Yoo Suh, Aaron Wiest, and Gang Duan, Caltech graduate students; Mary-Laura Lind, a visiting scientist; and Marios D. Demetriou, a senior research fellow.
PASADENA, Calif.-- If humans had see-through skin like a jellyfish, spotting disease like cancer would be a snap: Just look, and see a tumor form or grow.
But humans, of course, are not remotely diaphanous. "The reason a person is not transparent is that their tissues are highly scattering," sending light waves careening through the tissue instead of straight through, as they would through the tissue of that jellyfish, explains Changhuei Yang of the California Institute of Technology.
This scattering, in addition to rendering all of us opaque, makes the detection of disease a much trickier issue, requiring a host of diagnostic tests and procedures. But not, perhaps, for much longer, thanks to a new optical trick developed by Yang, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering, and his colleagues, that counteracts the scattering of light and removes the distortion it creates in images.
A study describing the process appears in the February issue of the journal Nature Photonics.
It is well known that light scattering in a material is not exactly the random and unpredictable process one might imagine. In fact, scattering is deterministic, which means that the path that a beam of light takes as it traverses a particular slice of tissue and bounces and rebounds off of individual cells, is entirely predictable; if you again bounce light through that same swath of cells, it will scatter in exactly the same way.
The process is even reversible; if the individual photons of light that scattered through the tissue could be collected and sent back through the tissue, they'd bounce back along the same path and converge at the original spot from which they were sent. "The process is similar to the scattering of billiard balls on a pool table. If you can precisely reverse the paths and velocities of the billiard balls, you can cause the billiard balls to reassemble themselves into a rack," Yang explains.
Yang, along with his colleagues at Caltech, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and MIT, exploited this phenomenon to offset the murky nature of our tissues.
Their technique, called turbidity suppression by optical phase conjugation (TSOPC), is surprisingly simple. The scientists used a holographic crystal to record the scattered light pattern emerging from a 0.46-mm-thick piece of chicken breast. They then holographically played the pattern back through the tissue section to recover the original light beam. "This is similar to grabbing hold of the direction of time flow and turning it around; the time-reversed photons must retrace their trajectories through the tissue," Yang says. "The task is formidable though, as this is comparable to starting with a rack of 10 to the 18th power billiard balls (or photons), scattering them around the table, and attempting to reassemble them into a rack."
"Until we did this study, it wasn't clear that the effect will be observable with biological tissues. We were pleasantly surprised that the effect was readily observable and remarkably robust," Yang says. "This study opens up numerous possibilities in the use of optical time reversal in biomedicine."
One possible use of the technique is in photodynamic therapy, in which a highly focused beam of light is aimed at cancerous cells that have absorbed cell-killing light-sensitive compounds. When the light hits the cells, the compounds are activated and destroy the cells. Photodynamic therapy is most effective in treating cancers on the skin surface. Yang's technique, however, offers a way to concentrate light onto cancer-killing compounds located more deeply within tissue.
Yang's idea is to inject strongly light-scattering particles that are coated with light-activated cancer-killing drugs into diseased tissue. Shine a beam of light into the tissue, and it would be reflected off the scattering compounds as it bounces through the tissue. Some of the scattered light would return to the source, where it could be recorded as a hologram.
This hologram would contain information about the path that the scattered light took through the tissue, and, in effect, describe the optimal path BACK toward the light-scattering molecule--and the cancer-killing compounds. Playing back the signal with a stronger burst of light will then activate the therapeutic drugs, which kill the cancer cells.
In addition, the technique could offer a way to power miniature implants buried deep within tissues. "If you take a quick survey of what is out there at present, you will see that implants are fairly large," Yang says. "For example, a pacemaker is about the size of a cell phone. Why are they so big? A large part of the reason is because they need to carry their own power sources."
The key to making smaller implants, then--say, the size of a pen tip--is to eliminate the power sources. "I think implants that carry photovoltaic receivers are particularly promising," he says. "The effect can be applied to tailor light-delivery mechanisms to efficiently channel light into tissues and onto these implants."
Zahid Yaqoob, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering at Caltech, performed most of the experiments reported in the paper. The other authors of the paper are Demetri Psaltis, professor of optics and dean of engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and Michael S. Feld, a professor of physics at MIT.
PASADENA, Calif.--Nature knows how to make proteins and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) dance to assemble and sustain life. Inspired by this proof of principle, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have demonstrated that it is possible to program the pathways by which DNA strands self-assemble and disassemble, and hence to control the dynamic function of the molecules as they traverse these pathways.
The team invented a versatile DNA motif with three modular domains that can be made to interact with complementary domains in other species of the same motif. Rewiring these relationships changes the dynamic function of the system. To make it easier to design such systems, the researchers developed a graphical abstraction of the motif that can be used to write "molecular programs." As described in the January 17 issue of the journal Nature, the team experimentally demonstrated the execution of four such programs, each illustrating a different class of dynamic function.
The study was performed by a team of four at Caltech: Niles Pierce, associate professor of applied and computational mathematics and bioengineering; Peng Yin, senior postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and computer science; Harry Choi, graduate student in bioengineering; and Colby Calvert, research technician.
Programming pathways is a bit like planning a road trip. The final destination might be important, but the true enjoyment is picking and traveling the route. In the test tube, the goal is not solely to direct the molecules to assemble into a target structure, but to engage them in a sequence of maneuvers so as to implement a prescribed dynamic function before the system reaches equilibrium. The energy to power the reactions is stored in the molecules themselves. Each molecule is initially trapped in a high-energy state so that it can release this energy as it engages in handshakes with other molecules.
A molecular program is written and executed in four steps. First, the intended assembly and disassembly pathways are described using a graphical abstraction called a "reaction graph." This molecular program is then translated into molecular mechanisms described at the level of base pairing between individual complementary bases. Computational design algorithms developed in the group are then used to encode this mechanism into the DNA sequences. Finally, the program is executed by mixing the physical molecules.
To demonstrate this approach, the team experimentally demonstrated a variety of dynamic functions: catalytic formation of branched junctions, cross-catalytic circuitry with exponential system kinetics, triggered dendritic growth of molecular "trees," and autonomous locomotion of a molecular bipedal walker.
As Pierce describes it, these results take them closer to achieving a long-term goal of creating a "compiler for biomolecular function"--an automated design tool that takes as input a molecular program and provides as output a set of biomolecules that execute the desired function. He remarks, "It's about time for the stone age of molecular compilers to begin."
PASADENA, Calif.--Michael Ortiz, the Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, is the first winner of the Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics. The newly established international prize, which will be awarded every four years, is also the first of its kind in this field.
The Hill Prize, sponsored by scientific publisher Elsevier Limited and awarded under the auspices of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, will be bestowed in August 2008 at the Union's 22nd Congress in Adelaide, Australia. Ortiz will receive a plaque and $25,000.
Ortiz is being recognized for several contributions within the past decade, among them a new method for computing plastic deformation. His Caltech colleague, mechanics and materials science professor Kaushik Bhattacharya, describes Ortiz's formulation as "a combination of the cutting edge of mechanics and the cutting edge of mathematics." Plastic deformation reshapes a material without breaking it, like stretching a piece of Silly Putty, in incremental steps. Ortiz developed the incremental variational principle, which allows the computation of plastic deformations as they proceed. "These processes immediately affect applications ranging from the most mundane engineering to the kind of sophisticated things that go into modern manufacturing," says Bhattacharya.
Another of Ortiz's contributions, which he calls the quasi-continuum method, was developed in collaboration with Rob Phillips, professor of applied physics and mechanical engineering at Caltech, while they were both at Brown University. The method forms a bridge between the way engineers describe mechanical properties of materials at the scale of the atom and the way they describe these properties at a larger scale.
Atomistic physics, at the scale of nanometers, applies quantum mechanics to the study of how energy interacts with matter. At the scale of micrometers, continuum mechanics treats an object's substance, or matter, as uniformly changing, and a different set of physical rules applies. The crux of the problem, says Bhattacharya, is that "the way we describe the physics at the atomistic scale is different from how we describe it at the continuum scale. But the properties you observe at the larger scale are the sum total of all the properties at every scale leading up to it. This formula unites the scales.
"The quasi-continuum method is the first rigorous way of approaching this problem," Bhattacharya notes. "Most approaches are ad hoc. This is a method that goes down to fundamental physics and mathematics to do it in a seamless manner. It has beautiful mathematics and physics in it and has a really fantastic computational structure. It was so far ahead of its time when they started doing this around 10 years ago. When you see it you say, 'That's exactly the way to do it!'"
Ortiz says he feels greatly honored to win the prize because of the recognition that it brings to theoretical and computational mechanics. "I have always enjoyed working closely with mathematicians, physicists, and chemists, and I hope that this prize will underscore the importance of those collaborations," he says. "I am greatly indebted to my brilliant students, who have been an inexhaustible source of energy and enthusiasm; to my colleagues and collaborators over the years, from whom I have learned most of what I know; and to my family for their constant and unconditional support."
According to Bhattacharya, the Hill Prize is intended to be the first highly and internationally visible prize for all of mechanics. Its analogue for fluid mechanics, the Batchelor Prize, was created at the same time and awarded to Caltech alumnus Howard Stone, the Joseph Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University.
About Ortiz's achievement Bhattacharya says, "I was not surprised that he won, because Michael is that caliber a person. He is extraordinarily creative. Every time you talk to him he has a new idea, and his ideas are really radical departures from what people have done in the field."
Lab experiments that mimic the way the ground moves during destructive earthquakes require some sophisticated equipment, and they yield valuable insights. Caltech scientists studying how sliding motion spreads along a fault interface conducted a series of experiments involving ultrafast digital cameras and high-speed laser velocimeters to replicate a range of realistic fault conditions.
The team documented for the first time a systematic variation in earthquake rupture patterns called pulselike and cracklike ruptures. The experiments also revealed that both types of ruptures can transition to a state known as supershear speed, which generates its own characteristic ground shaking. The results appeared in the November 27 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists include Xiao Lu, graduate student in aeronautics; Nadia Lapusta, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and geophysics; and Ares Rosakis, the von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering and director of the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories.
Simple theoretical models of earthquake ruptures show they slide like a crack--the entire length of the fault slides for just about as long as the earthquake lasts. But slip models used by seismologists to match records of ground motions from past earthquakes have suggested a different mode of rupture, one that moves like a pulse. A pulse of slip would travel down the length of a fault like a ripple passing over the surface of a pond, with all motion contained in the ripple, and the fault surface "healing" in its wake.
The forces that build up on either side of a fault, known as tectonic loading, can vary greatly and lead to different types of fault slip behavior. "Numerical calculations of earthquake ruptures that use friction laws guided by laboratory experiments produce both crack- and pulselike modes, depending on how loaded the fault is," says Lapusta. "We set out to test the predictions of these calculations in our experimental study." Pulse modes are predicted by calculations where faults are less loaded, but to make a fault slip under these conditions, models have to assume that fault friction decreases as the fault slip gets faster. This behavior, called rate-weakening friction, has been of long-standing interest to Lapusta and to Thomas Heaton, professor of engineering seismology, whose influential work on slip pulses demonstrated their short duration, and who proposed rate-weakening friction as a likely explanation.
The experiments began with a 9.5-millimeter-thick photoelastic plate sliced at an angle through its length, simulating a fault in Earth's crust. Pressure on the two sides of the fault was applied incrementally at an angle to build up the different components of loading. To trigger an earthquake rupture, a nickel wire the diameter of a human hair was embedded in the plate interface and then electrically discharged, creating a small explosion followed by a spontaneously spreading rupture. Lasers measured the relative movements on each side of the fault after the shock, and a high-speed camera captured the movements in 5-microsecond intervals. The mini-explosions were repeated for various orientations of tectonic loading.
The experimental setup mimics conditions under which very large earthquakes rupture Earth's crust along major strike-slip faults like California's San Andreas fault or the Kunlun fault in northern Tibet. The initial experimental design was devised by Rosakis; Smits Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus Hiroo Kanamori; and their joint graduate student Kaiwen Xia, who is now a professor at the University of Toronto.
The new experimental results support the models that suggest faults can have pulselike ruptures. "This is the first time we observed this spontaneous pulselike rupture in an experiment that mimics crustal earthquakes. We proved its existence," says Lu.
The experiments also documented under what conditions pulselike ruptures arise. When the plate interface was oriented at a 70-degree angle to the direction of compression, the rupture propagated as a narrow pulse. At smaller angles, the pulses got wider, until they transitioned into cracklike sliding modes. These experimental observations demonstrate the role that tectonic loading plays in how earthquakes rupture, and imply that real faults are governed by rate-weakening friction.
Another experimental result is related to earthquake rupture speeds. Calculations since the 1970s have predicted phenomena known as supershear bursts, which would cause destructive, high-frequency ground motions. Rosakis, Kanamori, and Xia have demonstrated such bursts in their experiments in recent years. Supershear bursts were shown to have caused damage during the 1979 Imperial Valley, 1992 Landers, and 1999 Izmit, Turkey, earthquakes.
In the experiment by Lu, Lapusta, and Rosakis, supershear propagation is seen to arise during both pulselike and cracklike earthquake ruptures. "That's new--nobody has seen before that either of those modes could transition to supershear," says Rosakis. Shock waves generated by supershear propagation generate more ground shaking, he adds, and notes that with more details about exactly how earthquakes rupture, scientists can devise more sophisticated ways for buildings to survive the specific types of shaking that arise.
PASADENA, Calif.--When termites are chewing on your home, your immediate thought probably isn't "I wonder how they digest that stuff?" But biologists have been gnawing on the question for more than a century. The key is not just the termite, but what lives in its gut. A multitude of genes from the microbes populating the hindgut of a termite have been sequenced and analyzed, and the findings reported today in the journal Nature.
California Institute of Technology associate professor of environmental microbiology Jared Leadbetter led a team of researchers from other universities, private industry, and the Department of Energy (DOE) in uncovering the genetic underpinnings and the roles of bacteria in wood digestion by "higher termites." These insects abound in tropical and subtropical ecosystems. What the team found, says Leadbetter, is "a comprehensive set of blueprints for the bacteria that help dismantle wood."
Prior to this study, only one gene--in the insect itself--had been connected to the termite's rare ability to digest and nourish itself with wood, a substance that is energy-rich but hard to break down. It had also long been suspected that the 250 bacterial species that crowd the pinhead volume of a higher termite's hindgut might be directly involved in the process. But there was no way of knowing their roles for sure, because most of the organisms die quickly when removed from their host. Although the first bacterium genome was sequenced in 1994, it was a few years before scientists even considered sequencing entire communities of multiple species of organisms.
Leadbetter and his colleagues proposed to the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) that the gut community of the Costa Rican termite Nasutitermes be examined because it is abundant and it plays significant roles in the wood degradation that helps to renew ecosystems. Leadbetter joined forces with collaborators at JGI, Verenium Corporation's San Diego facilities, and INBio, the National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica. They sequenced and analyzed more than 80,000 genes encoded by many of the hindgut bacteria species. "This was a fairly risky project when we proposed it," says Leadbetter, because "in these abundant tropical termites, there was no compelling evidence that these microbes play direct roles in cellulose degradation."
When the results started coming in, "we all breathed a big sigh of relief, because it turned out to be a gold mine in there," Leadbetter says. They found nearly 1,000 genes that underlie roles in breaking down two of wood's main components, cellulose and xylan, into their component sugars. The degradation of cellulose and xylan requires an arsenal of enzymes because of the huge diversity of biochemical bonds in wood. "This isn't some soft paper or grass we're talking about," says Leadbetter. "It's a hard substrate." Wood is made of three tightly intertwined compounds; taking it apart is a challenge, and termites are among the few known animals that can do it.
Leadbetter and his colleagues hope to eventually uncover exactly how each gene is involved in degrading wood, and where the energy the termite derives from the wood goes. This has recently become a focus of interest for those interested in developing an effective, industrial method to convert wood into ethanol. The challenge lies in events at the start of the process, like those involved in breaking down cellulose and xylan. Leadbetter and his colleagues believe that by investigating the genes that underlie these primary reactions, better ways of manufacturing biofuel can eventually be developed.
The study also identified nearly 100 different species of bacteria called spirochetes that belong to the genus Treponema. This membership makes them closely related to the bacterium that causes syphilis and to other spirochetes implicated in Lyme disease and gum disease. In termites, though, the findings show that these spirochetes actually benefit the health of their hosts. The genome sequencing also showed that the spirochetes are active in processes that generate hydrogen, an energy-rich gas, from wood. Certain genes also indicate that gut spirochetes can essentially taste or smell hydrogen and will swim either to or from its sources in the gut. In general, Leadbetter says, it looks like "these bacteria differ from those that dominate the gut tracts of humans and other mammals in their broad capacity to swim in response to diverse chemical stimuli. This behavior may be relevant to effective wood degradation."
Other Caltech authors of the paper are Eric Matson, a postdoctoral scholar in environmental science and engineering; Xinning Zhang, a graduate student in environmental science and engineering; and Elizabeth Ottesen, a graduate student in biology. Group leaders are Dan Robertson of Verenium Corporation, Phil Hugenholtz of the JGI, Giselle Tamayo of INBio, and Eric Mathur, formerly of Diversa (now at Synthetic Genomics).
PASADENA, Calif.--It all started last fall, in a classroom at Caltech. A team of students in Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ken Pickar's course, Product Design for the Developing World, decided to create wheelchairs for people in developing countries that could tackle the rugged terrain. With two bicycles and three creative brains contributing, the project took off.
"There is a lot of creativity in this class," says Pickar. "But, this particular group displayed an immense amount of ingenuity both on the engineering and business sides."
Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson and Dan Oliver, who have all since graduated, came up with the idea for the non-profit organization Intelligent Mobility International (IMI), which is now among four finalists for a contest on "NOW," a PBS series. The Project Enterprise Contest will showcase a team that is using business tools to tackle a social problem.
IMI is looking to help the 20 million people with disabilities in developing countries regain mobility. Currently, only 1 percent of those disabled people own their own wheelchairs, and those chairs tend to be ill-suited for the rough terrain that disabled people must cross in rural areas.
According to Roy, Guatemala was the best place to start their work.
"We had done some research there and built a small network. We could have tried out the project in Mexico, which is much closer, but we thought it would be best to try it first in a smaller country."
Guatemala, with a population of about 12 million, is the focus of Transitions, another nonprofit organization that works with the disabled community in that country. Transitions will help IMI determine who needs the wheelchairs most.
Sponsorships for the wheelchairs will sell for $300 in the U.S. Disabled Guatemalans will be able to contribute a small amount towards the chairs as well
Roy says the team is also trying to encourage other college students to get involved in global philanthropic causes.
"The world is becoming a smaller place with the social networking revolution, and we can now use Facebook and the Internet to connect people around the world to tackle these problems. If young people in our country knew what they could do to help, they would get involved in these issues-it's the only way we can create a more sustainable world."
Thomas Oliver, a junior at Caltech, says the project helped him realize that it is possible to start a business from scratch. He has found that working for IMI is completely different from the other jobs he has had on campus.
"It's a tiny, tiny business," says Oliver. "So, everything you do helps push it a little further."
NOW is offering to chronicle up-and-coming social entrepreneurs as they work to get a project off the ground. The four finalists were chosen by judges, but the winning team will be chosen by the public through a voting system that can be found online at http://www.pbs.org/now/enterprisingideas/poll.html. The polls close October 31, and a final team will be announced November 2.