Keio's new GIGA Program

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rodney Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp>
Date: May 24, 2010 8:01:40 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Keio's new GIGA Program

Dave, for IP, if you please:

Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus is creating GIGA, the Global
Information and Communication Technology and Governance Academic
Program, a new undergraduate program with the language of instruction
to be English.  The first class of freshmen is to be admitted in
September 2011, with applications due in January.

The primary website for GIGA is 
http://ic.sfc.keio.ac.jp/

(IPers may recognize one of the names, if not necessarily the face,
among the introductory videos :-).)

Our vision for GIGA is to develop the next generation of international
leaders in ICT, while providing them with the grounding in governance,
international development, and entrepreneurship required to ensure
that technology benefits society.  While the natural geographic focus
would be East and Southeast Asia and Oceania, we also encourage
high-quality applicants from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the
rest of Asia and the Middle East to join us.

SFC is home to many vital organizations, including:
* the Asian office of the W3C;
* AutoID Labs Japan, focusing on advancement and standardization of
 RFID (the other key AutoID labs are at MIT and Cambridge);
* SoI, School on Internet, a very early distance learning project;
* AI3, a satellite network reaching from Nepal to Indonesia, which is
 used for:
* SoI-Asia, broadcasting classes in English to dozens of universities
 throughout Asia, and, of course:
* the WIDE Project, headed by Jun Murai.  WIDE is an organization of
 about 800 Internet researchers from many universities and companies
 around Japan, and recently had its twentieth birthday.  (WIDE was
 the host for IETF in Hiroshima last year and SIGCOMM in Kyoto a few
 years ago.)

Keio is Japan's oldest, and arguably most prestigious, private
university, with several prime ministers, hundreds of CEOs of major
corporations, and at least two astronauts among our alumni/alumnae,
including Japan's first woman astronaut.  The founder, Yukichi
Fukuzawa, appears on the 10,000-yen note.  More relevant here,
Prof. Jun Murai is the man who brought the Internet to Japan, creating
the first inter-university network in Japan (JUNET, 1984), and making
the first TCP/IP connection to the U.S. mainland in 1989.  Prof. Murai
also helped to found the Shonan Fujisawa Campus in 1990, the youngest
of Keio's major campuses and a radical educational departure in Japan.

At SFC, we involve our undergraduates in hands-on research, usually
starting from their sophomore year.  Probably half of the students'
learning, and 90% of their growing up, happens in the context of the
lab.  Over time, the rigor and originality of the student projects
increases, to the point where many of our students present their
bachelor's thesis work at international conferences or work in
standardization organizations, such as writing Internet Drafts
intended to develop into RFCs.  Overall, SFC has a strong focus on the
impact of technology on society.

The faculty cover all aspects of computer networking, with strong
projects on mobile networking, RFID systems, intelligent
transportation systems (the iCar project was among the world's first
to connect a moving vehicle to the Internet, some fifteen years ago),
and distance learning.  SFC is strong in ubiquitous computing (Dave
and others know Prof. Hide Tokuda from his days at CMU), multimedia
databases (Prof. Kiyoki is exploring the cultural context-sensitive
emotions generated by images, colors and sounds), and other areas.  My
own group is one of the few places in the world where you can study
quantum computer architecture.

SFC is also the home to the Eliica project, a 300 km/hour,
eight-wheeled electric vehicle, and to a large bioinformatics
institute, though much of the work for both of those takes place
off-campus.  Prof. Maracke, one of our newest hires, is a Creative
Commons representative and expert on intellectual property.  Still
other faculty run incubators, teach entrepreneurship, or run NGOs in
places such as rural Thailand.  The faculty have Ph.D.s from Harvard,
Stanford, Edinburgh, Columbia, Georgetown, and other top universities,
and many serve as advisers to the government.

Our student body includes students from China, Korea, Indonesia,
Vietnam, Mongolia, Tonga, the U.S., and numerous other countries.  It
has long been possible to operate comfortably in the graduate school
speaking only English, but until now Japanese has been required in the
undergraduate programs.  In the new GIGA Program, our goal is for
students to be able to graduate working only in English, though of
course it would be a waste to miss the opportunity to learn Japanese
in the process.

Most IPers, I presume, already have undergraduate degrees, but many
IPers have children or mentor young people thinking about their
futures, so we appreciate the help in spreading the word!

And by all means, any and all feedback on the program and the website
are welcome.  We are, of course, on the lookout for both visiting and
permanent faculty, as well.

Regards (and apologies for the length),

             --Rod

Rodney Van Meter
associate professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Japan
rdv () sfc wide ad jp
http://web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~rdv/
http://www.sfc.wide.ad.jp/IRL/








-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com