Stanford University

"Nagorno-Karabakh: Is a Solution Visible?" A Lecture by Minister Edward Nalbandian

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The people of Nagorno-Karabakh have long strived for the recognition of their right to self-determination. Azerbaijan reacted by unleashing a large scale military offensive that led to war, which ended in May 1994 with the signing of the cease-fire agreement by Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Armenia. The negotiation process is mediated by the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group – the USA, France and Russia. Though the parties were close to a solution on several occasions, the negotiations have not yielded a durable settlement. In April 2016 the conflict once again erupted with violence leaving hundreds killed and maimed. Since then, two summits have been convened to create conducive conditions for the advancement of the peace process.

 
Minister Edward Nalbandian has been the Foreign Affairs Minister of Armenia since 2008. He studied at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and received his PhD (in political science) from the Institute of Oriental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences. Minister Nalbandian began working at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the late 1970s. After Armenia's independence he was invited to work for the Armenian diplomatic service. He has been Armenia's Ambassador to Egypt, Morocco, Oman, France, as well as Israel, the Vatican and Andorra. He has also been Special Representative of the President of Armenia in different international organizations. Minister Nalbandian has published several works on international relations. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Armenian Medal of Mkhitar Gosh and the second-grade and first-grade Medals of Services to the Motherland, Commandeur and Grand Officier de la Légion D'honneur of France, Saint Gregory's Grand Cross Order of the Holy See (Vatican), the USSR order of Friendship of Nations, and others. He is married and has a daughter. 
 
Edward Nalbandian, Foreign Affairs Minister of Armenia Foreign Affairs Minister of Armenia Speaker
Seminars
European Security Initiative Lecture Series
European Security Initiative

SCPKU Doctoral Fellows Lunch Talk

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Joint Presentation

DESIGN UNDER UNCERTAINTY: APPLICATIONS IN AIRCRAFT DESIGN AND WATER RESOURCES

Rick Walter Fenrich, Aeronautics & Astronautics Department, Stanford University

What do stock market investments and aircraft design have in common? They both contain uncertainties! For example, one can never be sure of next year's stock returns or exactly what weather an aircraft will fly in. Despite their differences, in fact both disciplines can use similar techniques to manage their uncertainties. Engineers can use these techniques to make predictions about the behavior of the stock market or aircraft performance, leading to savings in time, saving (or making) money, and in the case of aircraft design, confidently achieving a required level of safety. His research seeks to advance these techniques and integrate them with optimization methods used in design. Rick is also expanding my application area to water resources engineering at Peking University.

COMMUNICATING WITH LIGHT ON COMPUTER CHIPS

Colleen Shang Fenrich, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Light has been used for centuries as a mode of communication between people such as by light houses, signal lamps, or even mirrors reflecting the sunlight. Recently, light has also revolutionized the world of telecommunications by transmitting our long-distance telephone calls, Internet traffic, and cable TV signals. However, one area in which light can still make significant advances is the communication of information between or within computer chips, otherwise known as the field of "silicon photonics," which can reduce power dissipation and increase speed in computer chips. Her research seeks to answer how to first generate light on computer chips.

REGISTRATION:

Email: sanjiu39@stanford.edu; Tel: 10-62744163

Lunch will be provided for those who have registered one day before the presentation

 

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STANFORD CENTER AT PEKING UNIVERSITY

  The Lee Jung Sen Building, Langrun Yuan, Peking University

  Please bring a photo ID and enter Peking University through the NE Gate.

  Pre-registration for vehicle entrance inside the campus is required.  

  Please note there are no parking spaces outside the Center.

 

Seminars

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FINANCIAL DECENTRALIZATION IN CHINA

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Speaker:

ADAM LIU   Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, Stanford University

   Date: August 4th, 2016 (Thursday)  

   Time: Lunch at 11:45; Presentation and discussion 12:00 – 13:15

Developed, competitive banking systems are crucial for economic development. Yet, both cross-country and historical research has found that the emergence of such banking systems requires the rise of a limited government in the first place. Set against the extant literature, China becomes a big anomaly: the number of commercial banks in China has increased exponentially in the reform era without political change. Building and exploiting a unique spatial dataset covering all Chinese banks and bank branches built in the reform era—combined with existing datasets on Chinese firms, archival materials, as well as fieldwork—my dissertation seeks first to distill the political economic logic of bank proliferation in China, and second to assess the economic and distributive consequences of bank proliferation.

Registration: 

Email: sanjiu39@stanford.edu

Phone: 010-6274 4163

 

The Lee Jung Sen Building

Langrun Yuan, Peking University

Seminars

Implications of the Chinese military's uses of cyber for inter-state crisis management

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Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to allow for an accurate headcount.

Abstract: Dr. Johnston will present a preliminary analysis of some of the tensions between inter-state crisis management principles (as accepted by many Chinese crisis management experts) and concepts for the use of cyber weapons in military conOlicts being developed by the Chinese military.

About the Speaker: Alastair Iain Johnston is The Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution in summer 2016. He has written on socialization theory, identity and foreign policy, and strategic culture, mostly with application to the study of China’s foreign policy and East Asian international relations.

Alastair Iain Johnston Harvard University
Seminars

Zero to One and One to Ten: The art of starting a startup and scaling

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Akiko Naka was born on October 12th 1984 in Japan. Akiko serves as a founder and chief executive officer at Wantedly, Inc., the professional social networking service she started in her apartment. Following its official launch in February 2012, Wantedly grew to 1 million monthly active users and 15,000 corporates, which has become the leading professional social networking service in Tokyo. She believes that social products enable people to change their life. Prior to Wantedly, she was a growth coordinator at Facebook Japan, contributing in the marketing and product development of Facebook in Japan. Before joining Facebook, she worked at Goldman Sachs in equity sales. She graduated from Kyoto University in 2008 with a B.A. in Economics.

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/
Akiko Naka, Founder and CEO, Wantedly, Inc
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Cybersecurity Regulations and Power Grid Resilience

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Abstract: The NERC-CIP standards are the only federally mandated cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure in the United States.  Targeting the electric system, the standards have been developed to ensure the reliability and the resilience of the electric grid and prevent catastrophic failures.  Although the standards have been around for almost a decade, their role in building the resilience of the electric grid is fiercely contested, with critics claiming the standards represent little more than a ‘check box’ exercise that directs attention and resources away from achieving real security.  This talk will present evidence on the effectiveness of the standards in addressing risk and offer suggestions as to how the standards might be improved to enhance resilience.

About the Speaker: Aaron Clark-Ginsberg is a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Postdoctoral Scholar at CISAC.  His research interests center on the theory and practice of disaster risk governance, particularly resilience and disaster risk reduction approaches.  He is currently researching how government regulations designed to improve the resilience of the power grid to cyber-threats are affecting utility companies.

Aaron holds a PhD and MSc in Humanitarian Action from the University College Dublin and a BA in American Studies with a Concentration in Environmental Studies from Kenyon College.  Aaron's doctoral research examined how international NGOs interacted with national stakeholders to reduce disaster risk in developing countries.  As part of this, Aaron traveled to ten countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean to review risk reduction and resilience building approaches addressing a variety of hazards including flooding, drought, price shocks, cyclones, landslides, erosion, disease, and conflict.

Aaron has extensive experience in real world application of risk management principles.  Aaron’s PhD was in conjunction with Concern Worldwide, an international Irish humanitarian organization.  While at Concern, Aaron produced a series of reports on risk management in different countries and contexts designed to improve the effectiveness of Concern’s approach to risk reduction. He has also conducted policy-focused research on humanitarian reform for the World Humanitarian Summit Irish Consultative Process, the results of which were used to help develop the Irish position on humanitarian action. Aaron also spent four seasons working as a wildland firefighter for various governmental and private sector organizations across the western United States.

 
Cybersecurity Regulations and Power Grid Resilience (preliminary findings)
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Cybersecurity Postdoctoral Scholar CISAC
Seminars

The Lessons Private Schools Teach: Using a Field Experiment to Understand the Effects of Private Schools on Political Behavior

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About the Topic: Government services have often been found to act as important sites of political socialization.  Through interactions with institutions and functionaries of the state, individuals learn important lessons about their worth as citizens and the functioning of democracy.  What then happens when governments no longer provide basic services and are replaced by the private sector?  In the context of a large private school voucher experiment, I leverage the randomized distribution of private school vouchers to understand the impact of private schools on citizen's engagement with the state.  Based on an original household survey of 1,200 households conducted five years after a voucher lottery, I find that voucher winning households hold stronger market-oriented beliefs than voucher losing households.  Voucher winning households are willing to pay more for private services and express a preference for private service provision.  However, voucher winning households show no difference in political participation.  Evidence suggest that this is driven by a belief in private providers as permanent economic actors.  These results suggest economic preferences are malleable and exposure to different economic actors, in the form of private schools, have the potential to change them.

About the Speaker: Emmerich Davies is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and will be joining the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in July 2016.  His dissertation examines the growth of private elementary education in India. His work has been supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellowship, and the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation. In addition, Emmerich has a project with Tulia Falleti on local community political participation after the left turn in Bolivia and is beginning work on variation in education quality across India.

Goldman Conference Room

Encina Hall East, 4th floor

616 Serra St.

Stanford, CA 94305

Emmerich Davies Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science The University of Pennsylvania
Seminars

'Hell Chosun' and 'Ghost Island': Growing Voter Anger and New Nationalisms in South Korea and Taiwan

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Left-center parties in South Korea and Taiwan recently defeated their conservative opponents amid a surge in turnout by younger voters. What are the underlying causes of these developments? Do they signal the beginning of a political transformation in these vibrant democracies? Booseung Chang will discuss the role of growing voter anger over socio-economic disparities and the rise of new nationalisms in potentially changing the political party systems of South Korea and Taiwan, along with the implications for the United States.

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Booseung Chang is the 2015-16 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. His research focuses on domestic developments and foreign relations of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as North Korean nuclear issues. Chang received a doctorate in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he served as a South Korean foreign service officer for fifteen years.

Booseung Chang <i>2015-16 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow</i>, Stanford University
Seminars
Korean Studies Colloquium Series

Experimental Studies and Japanese Politics

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Japanese political science community has generally been slow in adopting an experimental approach in the study of Japanese politics. In the areas of public opinion research, however, there have been some new attempts that take advantages of the methodological merits of experiments in investigating the Japanese political attitudes and behaviors. In this presentation, Professor Kohno will introduce three studies that he and his colleagues have embarked on, which relate to three major issues that Japan faces: constitutional revision, national security policy, and people's attitudes under natural disasters.

 

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Professor Kohno received his Bachelor of Laws in 1985 from Sophia University, M.A. (International Relations) in 1987 from Yale University, Ph.D. (political science) in 1994 from Stanford University, and is currently Professor at School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University. Before joining Waseda, he taught at University of British Columbia (1994-98) and at Aoyama Gakuin University (1998-2003), and he was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution (1996-97). Outside Waseda, Professor Kohno served as Senior Officer at Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2013-16). He has published extensively in both English and Japanese on Japanese politics and Japan's foreign policy, including Japan's Postwar Party Politics (Princeton University Press, 1997) and Seido [Institutions] (University of Tokyo Press, 2002).

Masaru Kohno Professor, School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

High Performance Computing Past, Present and Future

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Abstract: Supercomputing impacts everybody, everywhere, every day. The simulation capabilities have allowed advanced medicine, energy, aviation and manufacturing. Supercomputers allow us to explore fields such as global climate change, as well as tackle problems for which experiments are impractical, hazardous or prohibitively expensive. The Department of Energy is a leader in supercomputers as part of their national security mission. With the demise of underground testing, supercomputers are a key resource used to ensure the safety and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. This talk will explore the buildup to our current petaflop systems and the challenges to obtaining exascale systems in the future.

About the speaker: As Acting Associate Director for Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Trish Damkroger leads the 1,000-employee workforce behind the Laboratory’s high performance computing efforts. The Computation team develops and deploys an integrated computing environment for petascale analytics and simulations such as understanding global climate warming, clean energy creation, biodefense, and nonproliferation. LLNL’s computing ecosystem includes high performance computers, scientific visualization facilities, high performance storage systems, network connectivity, multiresolution data analysis, mathematical models, scalable numerical algorithms, computer applications, and necessary services to enable LLNL mission goals and scientific discovery through simulation.

Trish Damkroger Acting Associate Director for Computation Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Seminars
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