The United States has transformed its relationships across the Asia-Pacific region under President Obama’s “rebalance” policy.  America’s top diplomat for the region will speak about the strategy the administration has pursued and what lies ahead.

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Prior to joining the NSC in January of 2009, he served as Director of the Office of Japanese Affairs and had assignments as U.S. Consul General in Osaka-Kobe, Japan (2005-2008); Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands (2002-2005); Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus (1999-2002); Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering (1997-99); Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1995-96); Political Section Unit Chief at U.S. Embassy Seoul, Republic of Korea (1992-95); Political Advisor to the Permanent Representative to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Ambassador Pickering (1989-92); Vice Consul in Osaka and Branch Office Manager in Nagoya, Japan (1987-89); and Assistant to the Ambassador to Japan, former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (1985-87).

In 1996, Mr. Russel was awarded the State Department's Una Chapman Cox Fellowship sabbatical and authored America’s Place in the World, (Georgetown University Press). Before joining the Foreign Service, he was manager for an international firm in New York City.

Mr. Russel was educated at Sarah Lawrence College, University College, UK and University of London, UK.

Sponsored by the U.S.-Asia Security Iniatitive 

Abstract

Speaker Bio

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Nancy Okail is the Executive Director of The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP). She brings more than 15 years of experience promoting democracy and development in the Middle East and North Africa region to this role. Prior to joining TIMEP, Dr. Okail was the director of Freedom House’s Egypt program. She has also worked with the Egyptian government as a senior evaluation officer of foreign aid and has managed programs for Egyptian pro-democracy organizations that challenged the Mubarak regime. She was also one of the defendants convicted in the widely publicized case of 43 non-governmental organization employees charged with using foreign funds to foment unrest in Egypt. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison, and, as a result, has spent the last four years in exile. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in the U.K. where her dissertation examined the power relations of foreign aid.

Please note: All research in progress seminars are off-the-record. Any information about methodology and/or results are embargoed until publication.

Abstract:

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of investment in healthcare in developing countries with corresponding widespread improvement in health indicators, though there still remain a billion people without basic access to primary care. Though there is a growing emphasis on integrating international donor funds with broad-based health system strengthening (HSS) efforts, very little is known about the process in which healthcare systems improve at the point of service, and how that, in turn, impacts population health.   Unlike the role of randomized trials on individual interventions, there is no gold standard for health systems research.  As global health expands its scope to the new field of planetary health broadly associated with the SDGs, the gaps in knowledge and research grow even further. Here, we present a framework for adaptive district-level HSS in Madagascar.  The program simultaneously strengthens the WHO’s six building blocks of HSS at all levels of the health system within a government district, while pioneering a rigorous system for policy and implementation research that includes 1) strengthening the district’s health management information systems (HMIS); 2) a prospective longitudinal cohort demographic and health study of over 1500 households; and 3) selected qualitative and biomedical research projects.  The research platform allows for the evaluation of system output indicators as well as population-level impact indicators, such as mortality rates.  Moreover, it provides a platform for scientific research on socio-economic and environmental determinants of health that are fundamental to the new field of planetary health.

All research in progress seminars are off-the-record. Any information about methodology and/or results are embargoed until publication.

Abstract:

The Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP) is a research group, led by Dr. Heidi Larson. The VCP studies the diverse sociocultural, political and psychological influences which affect confidence in vaccines and immunisation programmes in local settings worldwide, as well as examining trans-national influences. The VCP has developed multiple metrics to measure population confidence in vaccines and immunization programmes, from a survey-based Vaccine Confidence Index to temporal analysis of media and social media monitoring of vaccine sentiment  and local qualitative research to understand the drivers of vaccine reluctance and refusal. Together, these diverse metrics  generate a rich picture of the drivers of vaccine confidence to hep inform interventions.

While all the evidence points to the importance of understanding locally nuanced drivers of vaccine reluctance to inform interventions, Dr. Larson will talk about the equally important transnational impacts of local vaccine events and emotions through global cases studies on HPV, Polio, Flu and Ebola, and the implications for vaccine preparedness around newly introduced vaccines and programmes as well as pandemic preparedness.

Bio:

Heidi J. Larson, PhD,  is an anthropologist and Senior Lecturer, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, LSHTM, an Associate Clinical Professor, Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, and a Fellow at the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security. Dr. Larson previously headed Global Communication for Immunisation at UNICEF and chaired the Advocacy Task Force for GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation). She was also a  member of the WHO SAGE working group dealing with vaccine hesitancy.   Dr. Larson’s research focuses on the analysis of the social and political factors that can affect uptake on health interventions, particularly vaccines, and the implications for policies and programmes. Her particular interest is on risk and rumour management from clinical trials to delivery – and building public trust. Dr. Larson is currently the Principle Investigator for a large European Union grant (EBODAC) on the deployment, acceptance and compliance of an Ebola prime-boost vaccine trial in Sierra Leone.

*This seminar is co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health*

Please note: All research in progress seminars are off-the-record. Any information about methodology and/or results are embargoed until publication.

Abstract:

Quantitative evaluation of environmental, health, and safety policies requires a metric for the value of changes in health risk. This metric should be consistent with both the preferences of the affected individuals and social preferences for distribution of health risks in the population. There are two classes of metrics widely used in practice: monetary measures (e.g., compensating and equivalent variations, willingness to pay and willingness to accept compensation) and health-utility measures (e.g., quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)), both of which are summed across the population. Health-utility measures impose more structure on individual preferences than monetary measures, with the result that individuals’ preferences often appear inconsistent with these measures; for the same reason, health-utility measures help protect against cognitive errors and other sources of incoherence in estimates of the values of monetary measures obtained from revealed- and stated-preference studies. This paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence comparing these metrics and examining how they co-vary.

Abstract: The disclosure of software vulnerabilities has stirred controversy for decades among security researchers and software vendors, and more recently governments. Despite increasing interdependency of software and systems (e.g., the Internet of Things) and resulting complexity in vulnerability disclosure and coordination, no unified norms have yet emerged.

This talk addresses the development of norms that (attempt to) govern the disclosure of software security flaws in relation to structural changes of the software industry and the Internet. This includes new forms of private, but monetarily rewarded disclosure on markets and through bug bounty programs, as well as government efforts to prohibit proliferation of knowledge and technology through export controls. Recently, governments acknowledged the withholding of vulnerability information on the grounds of national security and law enforcement needs, trading off against the need for defensive security of civilian computers and networks.

The talk outlines pressing policy issues and connects them to recent developments (e.g., Apple vs. FBI). It concludes by making the case for why norms on vulnerability disclosure are an essential component in shaping cybersecurity governance.

About the Speaker: Andreas Kuehn is a Ph.D. Candidate in Information Science and Technology at Syracuse University. He joined CISAC as a Zukerman Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow in October 2014. Prior, he was a visiting graduate student at Cornell University’s Department of Science & Technology Studies. He holds a M.Sc. in Information Systems from the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

In his dissertation, Andreas examined the historical, organizational, and institutional developments of software vulnerability and exploit markets as they are shaped by the perennial controversy on vulnerability disclosure. His qualitative, empirical research on emerging technologies and governance is informed by Science and Technology Studies and Institutional Theory.

As the keynote for Shorenstein APARC's 8th annual Koret Workshop, Se Young Ahn, one of South Korea's leading public intellectuals, will analyze the Korean experience of utilizing global talent and immigration in the context of an extremely rapidly aging society.

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The Koret Workshop is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Abstract: Industry, medical centers, academics and patient advocates have come together to create common standards for the representation and exchange of genomics information for both research and clinical use in The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. Now GA4GH involves hundreds of organizations and individuals worldwide. The open source projects of our Data Working Group welcome participation by all individuals and organizations.

About the Speaker: David Haussler develops new statistical and algorithmic methods to explore the molecular function, evolution, and disease process in the human genome, integrating comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. As a collaborator on the international Human Genome Project, his team posted the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence. His team subsequently developed the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research. He built the CGHub database to hold NCI’s cancer genome data, co-founded the Genome 10K project so science can learn from other vertebrate genomes, co-founded the Treehouse Childhood Cancer Project to enable international comparison of childhood cancer genomes, and is a co-founder of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), a coalition of the top research, health care, and disease advocacy organizations.

Haussler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has won a number of awards, including the 2014 Dan David Prize, 2011 Weldon Memorial prize for application of mathematics and statistics to biology, 2009 ASHG Curt Stern Award in Human Genetics, and the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International Society for Computational Biology, the 2006 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in Artificial Intelligence.

- This event is jointly sponsored by the China Program and the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) -

Since September 2012, frictions between Beijing and Tokyo over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea have become unprecedentedly unstable. Both China's military and paramilitary activity in the surrounding waters and airspace and Japan's fighter jet scrambles have reached all­-time highs. Recent public opinion polls in both countries record mutual antipathy at the highest level since leaders normalized bilateral diplomatic ties in the 1970s.

Especially under these volatile conditions, risk has surged. Even an accident stemming from a low­-level encounter could quickly escalate into a major crisis between the world's second­- and third­-largest economies (and would entrap the first-largest: the United States). This seminar examines the strengths and weaknesses of China's and Japan's crisis management mechanisms and the implications of nascent national security councils (established in late 2013) in both countries for crisis (in)stability in the East China Sea. It will also examine the prospects for, and obstacles to, more effective crisis management.

Beyond its contemporary policy relevance, the discussion will also engage issues with important implications for Chinese and Japanese foreign policy decision­making, political reforms, civil­ military relations, and U.S. relations with both countries.

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Professor Liff’s research and teaching focus on international relations and security studies—with a particular emphasis on contemporary security affairs in the Asia-Pacific region; the foreign relations of Japan and China; U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific (esp. U.S. security alliances); the continuing evolution of Japan’s postwar security policy profile; and the rise of China and its impact on its region and the world. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in The China Quarterly, International Security, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Strategic Studies, Security Studies, and The Washington Quarterly, and has been cited widely in global media, including in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, and The Economist. Other recent publications include several book chapters in edited volumes and articles in policy journals and online, including in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest.

Professor Liff’s past academic research affiliations include the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the University of Virginia's Miller Center, the University of Tokyo's Institute of Social Science, Peking University's School of International Studies, the Stanford Center at PKU, and the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Law and Politics.

American innovation has helped power economic growth and rising living standards at home and abroad for nearly two centuries.  Today, many government officials, corporate executives, and researchers worry that the American innovation machine is losing its dynamism.  Others worry that the United States is about to be overtaken by rising Asian technological superpowers, like China, and that this will constrain the living standards of future generations of Americans.  Lee Branstetter draws upon the most recent data and economic scholarship to argue that neither fear is consistent with the evidence.  Instead, the evidence points to the emergence of an increasingly integrated global R&D system in which the emerging innovative strengths of nations like China reinforce American technological progress and productivity growth far more than they threaten it.  Branstetter concludes with a set of policy recommendations that can help ensure robust technological progress and economic growth in the 21st century.       
 

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