Stanford University

A Worst Practices Guide to Preventing Insider Threats

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Abstract: High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. Insider Threats offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the U.S. Army. Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan outline cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and they synthesize "worst practices" from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.

About the Speakers: Matthew Bunn is a Professor of Practice at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research interests include nuclear theft and terrorism; nuclear proliferation and measures to control it; the future of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle; and policies to promote innovation in energy technologies. Before joining the Kennedy School in January 1997, he served for three years as an adviser to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he played a major role in U.S. policies related to the control and disposition of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the United States and the former Soviet Union, and directed a secret study for President Clinton on security for nuclear materials in Russia.

Scott S. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Project Chair for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Amy Zegart is is co-director of CISAC and Professor of Political Science, by courtesy. She is also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Before coming to Stanford in 2011, Zegart served as professor of public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and as a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations. Her research examines the organization of American national security agencies and their effectiveness. She is the author of two award-winning books. Flawed by Design, which chronicles the development of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Council, won the highest national dissertation award in political science. Spying Blind, which examines why American intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the terrorist threat before 9/11, won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award. She has also published in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, and other leading academic journals. She serves on the editorial boards of Terrorism and Political Violence and Intelligence and National Security. Her most recent book is Eyes on Spies: Congress and the United States Intelligence Community.
 
Zegart was featured by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. 

- The book, Insider Threats, will be available for purchase at the event -

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Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Matthew Bunn Professor of Practice; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School

Amy Zegart

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E216
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-9754 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
amy_zegart_headshot_2026.jpg PhD

Dr. Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The author of five books, she specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and national security. At Hoover, she leads the Technology Policy Accelerator and the Oster National Security Affairs Fellows Program. She also is an associate director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute; and professor of political science by courtesy, teaching 100 students each year about how emerging technologies are transforming espionage.

Her award-winning research includes the leading academic study of intelligence failures before 9/11: Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton, 2007) and the bestseller Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton, 2022), which was nominated by Princeton University Press for the Pulitzer Prize. She also coauthored Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity, with Condoleezza Rice (Twelve, 2018). Her op-eds and essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Zegart has advised senior officials about intelligence and foreign policy for more than two decades. She served on the National Security Council staff and as a presidential campaign foreign policy advisor and has testified before numerous congressional committees. Before her academic career, she spent several years as a McKinsey & Company consultant.

Zegart received an AB in East Asian studies from Harvard and an MA and a PhD in political science from Stanford. She serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, and the American Funds/Capital Group.

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Seminars

Spent Nuclear Fuel in South Korea and China

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Abstract: Relative to the struggles Western nuclear powered countries have experienced in the recent past, South Korea and China have had notable success building up nuclear power at an impressive scale. China today leads the world in new builds of nuclear reactors. Moving beyond indigenous construction, South Korea is on the verge of completing its first exported power reactor in the UAE, marking an impressive accomplishment for this relatively new nuclear startup. However, China and South Korea now face a challenge other more established nuclear powered countries have yet to solve, an unresolved structure of the back end of the fuel cycle. Despite the uncertainty that exists about the ultimate fate of the spent fuel, the more immediate problem of interim storage is urgent. In this talk, I will review the status and urgency of this problem in the two countries with quantitative results from modeling accumulation, storage and transportation. I will then outline immediate policy mitigations needed in the short term as well as strategies for designing a more permanent solution.

About the Speaker: Rob Forrest is currently a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories where his research interests include nuclear power, cybersecurity, and nonproliferation. As a member of the systems research group, he specializes in data driven methods and analysis to inform policy for national security.

As a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, his research focused on one of the most pressing technical issues of nuclear power: what to do with spent nuclear fuel. Specifically, he looked at the more short term issues surrounding interim storage as they affect the structure of the back end of the fuel cycle. He focuses mainly on countries with strong nuclear power growth such as South Korea and China.

Rob’s interest in policy and nuclear issues began during his fellowship in the 2008 Public Policy and Nuclear Threats program at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego. In 2010, he also participated in the PONI Nuclear Scholars Initiative at CSIS.

Before coming to CISAC in 2011, Rob received his Ph.D. in high-energy physics from the University of California, Davis. Most of his graduate career was spent at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, IL where he performed a search for signs of a theory called Supersymmetry. Before beginning his graduate work, Rob spent two years at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. In 2001, Rob earned his B.S. in physics from the University of California, San Diego where, throughout his undergraduate career, he worked for NASA. 

Robert Forrest

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Forrest,_Robert.jpg
Rob Forrest is currently a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories where his research interests include nuclear power, cybersecurity, and nonproliferation. As a member of the systems research group, he specializes in data driven methods and analysis to inform policy  for national security.

As a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, his research focused on one of the most pressing technical issues of nuclear power: what to do with spent nuclear fuel. Specifically, he looked at the more short term issues surrounding interim storage as they affect the structure of the back end of the fuel cycle. He focuses mainly on countries with strong nuclear power growth such as South Korea and China.

Rob’s interest in policy and nuclear issues began during his fellowship in the 2008 Public Policy and Nuclear Threats program at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego. In 2010, he also participated in the PONI Nuclear Scholars Initiative at CSIS.

Before coming to CISAC in 2011, Rob received his Ph.D. in high-energy physics from the University of California, Davis. Most of his graduate career was spent at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, IL where he performed a search for signs of a theory called Supersymmetry. Before beginning his graduate work, Rob spent two years at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. In 2001, Rob earned his B.S. in physics from the University of California, San Diego where, throughout his undergraduate career, he worked for NASA. 

 

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Seminars

Computation and Society: The Case of Privacy and Fairness

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Abstract: Fueled with rapidly growing data sets and with breakthroughs in machine learning, algorithms are informing and often even making decisions that affect all aspects of life. All the way from which news articles we are exposed to and which ads we see to input to sentencing decisions and in the foreseeable future to the life-and-death emergency decisions of our cars. 
 
The centrality of automatic classification brings great utility to individuals, companies and society as a whole. Nevertheless, to unleash the full potential of such algorithms we must address substantial challenges in terms of the privacy of individuals, the protection of individuals from discrimination and the accuracy of the classification algorithms under adversarial manipulations.
 
In this talk, we will discuss some of the insights we learn from recent research in computer science. Specifically, we will discuss surprising connections and differences between privacy, fairness and correctness. We will also discuss the challenges and opportunities in stronger collaborations between computer science and social sciences on these topics.
 
About the Speaker: Omer Reingold is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. Past positions include Samsung Research America, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Microsoft Research, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and AT&T Labs. His research is in the Foundations of Computer Science and most notably in Computational Complexity and the Foundations of Cryptography with emphasis on randomness, derandomization and explicit combinatorial constructions. He is an ACM Fellow and among his distinctions are the 2005 Grace Murray Hopper Award and the 2009 Gödel Prize.
Omer Reingold Professor of Computer Science Stanford University
Seminars

The Asian Development Bank's 2017 Economic Forecast for Asia

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Decades of rapid growth transformed developing Asia into a largely middle-income region, but the pace of expansion has fallen off since the 2008 global financial crisis. This has serious implications for American businesses and the global economy as a whole.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) explores this challenge in its Asian Development Outlook 2017, a comprehensive economic forecast providing country and regional analysis and growth projections for 45 economies, including the People’s Republic of China, India and Indonesia. ADB's Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada will outline the report’s findings and policy options for innovation, education and infrastructure to spur growth in middle-income economies amid uncertainties ranging from protectionist threats to changing monetary policy.

 

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Yasuyuki Sawada is the chief spokesperson for ADB on economic and development trends, and leads the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department (ERCD), which publishes ADB's flagship knowledge products.

Mr. Sawada previously served as a Professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Earlier, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo; an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Korea University; a Research Associate at the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; and a Visiting Researcher at the Asian Development Bank Institute. He previously performed research work in a variety of institutions, such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute; the World Bank; Economic Research Institute of ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA); Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS); Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE); International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines; International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Sri Lanka; Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI) in Japan; and Japan Society of Promotion of Science (JSPS), where he led a number of large-scale development policy evaluation projects in Asia and other developing countries.

Mr. Sawada's research fields are macro- and micro-development economics, microeconometrics, economics of disasters, and field surveys and experiments. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research articles on diversified topics pertaining to Asia and other developing countries ranging from macro development issues, such as long-term economic growth and structural change, sovereign debt sustainability, foreign aid, trade, ageing and social security, and natural and man-made disasters to micro issues of poverty, education, infrastructure, microenterprises, microfinance, health, and disabilities.

A Japanese national, Mr. Sawada holds a Doctorate degree in Economics and a Master's degree in International Development Policy from Stanford University, USA; a Master's degree in International Relations from the University of Tokyo, Japan; a Master's degree in Economics from Osaka University, Japan; and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Keio University, Japan.

Yasuyuki Sawada Chief Economist, Asian Development Bank
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

An Education Strategy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Introducing the Stanford e-Japan Program

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In discussions of how Japan can harness Silicon Valley, and how Japan can accelerate its efforts to foster greater innovation and entrepreneurship, the endpoint is often “Japan’s education system needs to change.” However, the people discussing innovation, entrepreneurship, and harnessing Silicon Valley are rarely positioned to be able to take the next step and actively facilitate change. The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) has begun offering an interactive online learning program called Stanford e-Japan to high schools in Japan and plans to expand into the college level.  Students not only learn content provided by Stanford scholars, but are also exposed to critical thinking, creative but structured intellectual inquiry, and formulating informed opinions about topics of great relevance to everyday life – all in English. SPICE and the Stanford Silicon Valley – New Japan Project are delighted to collaborate on building new relationships and content to directly begin influencing educational change in Japan. In this SV-NJ Public Forum series, SPICE director Gary Mukai and SV-NJ project leader Kenji Kushida will provide an overview of educational skills needed for the Japanese young people of today and tomorrow, and introduce the Stanford e-Japan program.

 

Dr. Gary Mukai is the director of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) at Stanford University. Prior to joining SPICE in 1988, he was a teacher in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and in California public schools. Gary’s academic interests include curriculum and instruction, educational equity, and teacher professional development. He is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University. His curricular writings for U.S. schools include extensive work on Japan and the Japanese-American experience. In 2003, under his leadership, SPICE established the Reischauer Scholars Program, a distance-learning course on Japan and U.S.–Japan relations for high school students in the United States, and in 2015, SPICE launched Stanford e-Japan, a distance-learning course on the United States and U.S.–Japan relations for high school students in Japan. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for the promotion of mutual understanding between Japan and the United States, especially in the field of education. In 2015, he was selected as the recipient of the Stanford Alumni Award by the Asian American Activities Center Advisory Board. He has been a long-time interviewer of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program and member of the JET Alumni Association of Northern California board. 

Kenji E. Kushida is a Japan Program Research Scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and an affiliated researcher at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida’s research interests are in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and information technology. He has four streams of academic research and publication: political economy issues surrounding information technology such as Cloud Computing; institutional and governance structures of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster; political strategies of foreign multinational corporations in Japan; and Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008). Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. His received his MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Agenda

4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Talk and Discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking

RSVP Required

 
For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/

 

Gary Mukai, Director of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE)
Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Quantifying the influence of global warming on the probability of historically unprecedented extreme climate events

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Abstract: Effective climate risk management requires robust quantification of the probability of different kinds of hazards, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and severe storms. As a result, there has been increasing interest in the extent to which historical global warming has influenced the occurrence and severity of individual extreme climate events. However, although trends in the extremes of the seasonal- and daily-scale distributions of climate records have been analyzed for many years, quantifying the contribution of observed global warming to individual events that are unprecedented in the observed record presents a particular scientific challenge. I will describe a framework for leveraging observations and large climate model ensembles to quantify the influence of observed global warming on the probability of unprecedented extreme events. This approach is grounded on three tenets: (1) Focus on understanding the physical causes of the individual event; (2) Use formal uncertainty quantification to test the probability of those physical conditions occurring in the current climate; and (3) Use formal hypothesis testing to compare the probability of those physical conditions occurring in the current climate and a climate without human influence. My group has applied our analysis to a number of different climate variables from a number of individual events, including temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and atmospheric circulation patterns. Together, this work has shown that global warming can influence the risk of extreme events that are unprecedented in historical experience, particularly by altering the probability of the physical conditions that are responsible for the event. In addition, given the widespread public interest in “real time” attribution, the prospects for operational attribution analysis will also be discussed.

About the Speaker: Noah Diffenbaugh is a Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University. He studies the climate system, including impacts on agriculture, water resources, and human health. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Geophysical Research Letters. He has served as an IPCC Lead Author, and has provided scientific expertise to the White House, the Governor of California, and U.S. Congressional offices. Recognitions include the Holton Award from the American Geophysical Union and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. 

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

Noah S. Diffenbaugh Professor, School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences Stanford University
Seminars

Research Presentations (session 5 of 5) - Ishii, Liu, Minowa and Wang

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The format of this presentation is each of the three speakers will have approximately 15 minutes to present their research.  This will be followed by a short period of 5-10 minutes for any questions or comments from the audience.

 

In this session of the Corporate Affiliates Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

 

Hirotaka Ishii, Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry, Japan

Japan's Electricity Crisis? - What Japan Should Learn from the California Electricity Crisis

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The Japanese electricity retail market has been restructured since 2000. Since the full market liberalization has started from April 2016, households now have the ability to choose an electricity retailer. However, in the state of California, the electricity crisis - the massive blackout - happened just after the restructuring of its electricity retail market. In his research, Ishii investigates the reason why the California electricity crisis happened, whether it is possible that such a crisis will happen in the Japanese electricity market and what Japan should learn from the California electricity market.

 

Hui Liu, PetroChina

Shared Services (Center) Model and Best Practices

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As an effective operating strategy, Shared Services (Center) has been implemented to achieve cost reduction, process optimization, productivity enhancement, value creation and continuous improvement. With increasing economy globalization, many organizations have set up Shared Services Centers (SSC) to support functions such as HR, finance and IT, etc. In his research, Liu will share trends of the shared services evolution and introduce popular models of shared services, including Discrete Shared Services, Multi-function Shared Services (MFSS), Global Business Services (GBS) and Integrated Business Services (IBS). Liu will also share winning strategies that can be applied to deploy an effective Shared Services model based on global best practices.

 

Rui Minowa, Development Bank of Japan

Measures to Retain Talent in Large or Medium-Sized Companies

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The competition for acquiring talent among companies is intensifying in Japan. It is expected that it will become increasingly intense in the future as the working population decreases and the work behavior of young people changes. It is important for companies not only to acquire good talent, but to retain talent as well.

Silicon Valley is one of the fastest-moving, most competitive economies in the world.  Minowa studied some cases of successful Silicon Valley companies – comparing differences in labor customs and environment between Japan and the U.S.  As a result, Minowa shares suggestions on how to retain talent for large or medium-sized companies.

 

Zhuoyan Wang, PetroChina

Transformation Opportunities of Oil Companies

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Petroleum oil plays a significant role in our fuel mix today – currently accounting for 34% of global energy supplies. Oil prices suffered a significant drop in 2014 and brought huge strikes to the main oil exporters as well as to world economy. Where is the future of oil industry, and how will those oil companies overcome various challenges? In his research, Wang carries out analysis from oil development outlook to technology innovation in the energy field to the effect from market and policies. In this presentation, Wang discusses the transformation opportunities of traditional oil & gas companies.

 

Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry, Japan
PetroChina
Development Bank of Japan
PetroChina
Seminars

Research Presentations (session 4 of 5) - Nakaya, Zhang and Zhang

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The format of this presentation is each of the three speakers will have approximately 15 minutes to present their research.  This will be followed by a short period of 5-10 minutes for any questions or comments from the audience.

 

In this session of the Corporate Affiliates Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

 

Daisuke Nakaya, Japan Air Self Defense Force, "Japan's Future Direction of Its Defense Program and the Strengthening of Japan-U.S. Alliance In Order to Deter Conflict" 

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Since the conclusion of the Japan-U.S. security treaty in 1960, Japan and the U.S. have built a robust alliance based on common value and interests and Japan has maintained its peace and security, centered on the Security Arrangement with the United States. On the other hand, security challenges and destabilizing factors in the Asia-Pacific region are becoming more serious. There has been a tendency towards an increase in and prolongation of so-called “gray-zone” situations, that is, neither pure peacetime nor contingencies, over territory, sovereignty, and maritime economic interests. In his research, Nakaya focuses on Japan’s ability to effectively deter conflict in this situation and shares insights on the future of Japan’s Defense Program and its effort to strength the Japan-U.S. alliance.

 

Shaofeng Zhang, PetroChina, "Risk Analysis on Project Finance for the Cross-border Infrastructure"

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Large infrastructures have huge influence on economic increase, social development and cultural development. With the increase of global integration, more and more cross-border large infrastructures have been developed, are under construction or planning to be constructed to enhance the regional corporations.

Project finance is the most frequently used way to finance large infrastructures, especially cross-border infrastructures, and risk is connected with every part. Risk analysis helps all parties involved to clarify the principles of risk allocation – allowing a reasonable amount of control on the whole. Therefore, these large cross-border infrastructures can be financed, constructed and operated smoothly to achieve their economic, social and cultural goals. In his research, Zhang shares how to analyze risks linked to the projects on the whole, the relationship between those risks, and how those risks can be best allocated to relevant parties and appropriately managed.

 

Xuan Zhang, Beijing Shanghe Shiji Investment Company,  "Future Education in China"

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Improvement science is a disciplined approach to educational innovation that supports teachers, leaders, and researchers in collaborating to solve specific problems of practice. It brings discipline and methods to different logics of innovation by integrating the following – problem analysis, user of research, development of solutions, measurement of processes and outcomes, and rapid refinement through plan-do-study-act cycles. For teachers, school leaders and system leaders, improvement science moves educational innovation out of the realm of “fad” and into the realm of research-based, evidence-driven continuous improvement with the goal of increasing the effectiveness and educational practice. Improvement science is explicitly designed to accelerate learning-by-doing and is a more user-centered and problem-centered approach to the future of education. Zhang will share a case study of how improvement science influences the future education innovation. In his presentation, Zhang focuses on networked improvement communities (NICs) which has been demonstrated to be the most benefitcial approach in improvement science.

 

Japan Air Self Defense Force
PetroChina
Beijing Shanghe Shiji Investment Company
Seminars

Research Presentations (session 3 of 5) - Onishi, Muthukrishnan and Saito

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The format of this presentation is each of the three speakers will have approximately 15 minutes to present their research.  This will be followed by a short period of 5-10 minutes for any questions or comments from the audience.

 

In this session of the Corporate Affiliates Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Kanjiro Onishi, Ministry of Finance, Japan, "Challenges on Policy Finance in a Developing Country and Effective Technical Assistance: Case Study of Myanmar"

Myanmar has enjoyed a steady economic growth since the government implemented the economic reforms and opened its market up to the international communities. Many domestic and international companies consider that there are huge business opportunities in this frontier market. On the other hand, there are also various business risks. Onishi joined the team of Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, and the team has provided the technical assistance on effective credit analysis for Myanma Economic Bank (MEB). The project contributes to improve the financial sector and it will reduce some business risks that the companies inevitably face. In his research, he analyzes the results of the questionnaire surveys conducted with the project-participants and evaluates how effectively the project has enhanced the knowledge and expertise on credit analysis among MEB bankers.

 

A. Muthukrishnan, Reliance Life Sciences,"New Age Marketing in Healthcare"

The healthcare industry is in the midst of a massive shift.  Pharmaceutical companies are running hard to keep pace with changes brought about by digital technology.  Mobile communications, the cloud, advanced analytics, and the Internet of Things are among the innovations that are starting to transform the healthcare industry in ways already seen in the media, retail and banking industries.  Pharmaceutical executives are well aware of the disruptive potential and are experimenting with a wide range of digital initiatives.  However, many are finding it hard to determine what initiatives to scale up and how, as they are still unclear what digital success will look like five years from now.  Pharmaceutical companies can play a central role in the digital revolution of healthcare, but capturing this opportunity requires identifying the right initiatives.  In his research, Muthukrishnan is trying to find out where digital technology will drive the most value in the pharmaceutical industry to build a strategy for digital success.

 

Yohei Saito, Future Architect, "Transforming Business with Artificial Intelligence"

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has rapidly evolved.  Deep Learning, based on neural networks, has created great results in the fields of speech recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing, and some experimental results show performance equal to or superior to human ability.  Additionally, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology makes it possible to gather and analyze data in real time. Harnessing these types of technology effectively optimizes and maximizes business productivity.

In his research, Saito devised methodology and implementation guidelines for utilizing these state-of-the-art technologies in the business field.  These methodology and guidelines will help Japanese companies to transform their business more productively and competitively. 

Ministry of Finance, Japan
Reliance Life Sciences

Yohei Saito

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Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellow, 2016-17
yohei_saito.jpg MS

Yohei Saito is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2016-17.  Saito is the chief technology officer of Future Architect Inc., an IT consulting firm in Japan and leads the company's Technology Innovation group.  He has 15 years experience in software engineering and technological strategy.  Saito graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Technology with an M.S. in Computer Science.

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Future Architect, Inc.
Seminars

Research Presentations (session 2 of 5) - Morishige, Nishita and Sado

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The format of this presentation is each of the three speakers will have approximately 15 minutes to present their research.  This will be followed by a short period of 5-10 minutes for any questions or comments from the audience.

 

In this session of the Corporate Affiliates Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

 

Hiroki Morishige, Shizuoka Prefectural Government, "Regional Revitalization:  Overcoming Population Decline and Revitalizing Local Economy"

Population decline has been a major issue for Japan.  In the near future, this problem will cause a labor shortage and weaken local economies.  However, these adversities will also become an opportunity to create innovation, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), etc.  Silicon Valley is the center of these technologies and has the potential to stimulate world economy.  Morishige intends to propose approaches to realize regional revitalization in his hometown of Shizuoka.  He does so by applying the innovative strategies into Japan’s shrinking population.

 

 

Hidenori Nishita, Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry, Japan, "Corporate Organization to Innovation"

One of the most serious challenges of the Japanese economy is stagnant innovation of corporations though they have technological strengths and onsite readiness. The problems are a result of their rigid organizations, planning and decision-making systems. Though Japanese government has reformed corporate governance systems and is trying to promote the new “industrial revolutions”, it is of concern that practices of Japanese corporations have not changed.  In his research, Nishita shares a list of problems of Japanese corporate governance, development, decision-making system and so on, and then propose the solutions, comparing U.S. corporations.

 

 

Akihiko Sado, The Asahi Shimbun, "Media Technology and the Tokyo Olympics:  New Apps to Transform the Viewing Experience"

The Olympic Games have developed into something not only of sports but also of technology and innovation. Every four years with the onset of new technology, people have continued to enjoy the Olympics more and more. On the other hand, with the growth of the internet and readily available information, there has been a decrease in the reading of information put out by the media.

In the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, what technologies will be utilized and how will the media be able to provide information to people? Can media increase the reader’s engagement with new cutting-edge technologies such as AI?  How will the media incorporate them? In his research presentation, Sado tries to answer these questions by discussing the technology the media should utilize for increasing reader’s engagement in the future. Sado shares one option that the media should drive for Tokyo 2020 - a smartphone app he built that has a facial recognition system of computer vision (part of AI) that links athletes and information gathered by the media.

Shizuoka Prefectural Government
Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry, Japan
The Asahi Shimbun
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