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Lessons from Fukushima: Prepare for the unlikely
When a devastating earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the protective systems at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant complex in Japan in March 2011, it triggered a sequence of events leading to one of the worst releases of radioactive materials in the world to date. Although nuclear energy is having a revival as a low-emissions energy […]
Preparing to be prepared
The Kobe earthquake of 1995 devastated one of Japan’s major cities, leaving over 6,000 people dead while destroying or making unusable hundreds of thousands of structures. It toppled elevated freeway segments, wrecked mass transit systems, and damaged the city’s port capacity. “It was a shock to a highly engineered, urban city to have undergone that […]
Tech in translation
The Sony Walkman and virtual reality headsets are not just prominent examples of personal technology. In the hands of Paul Roquet, they’re also vehicles for learning more about Japan, the U.S., global technology trends — and ourselves. Roquet is an associate professor in MIT’s program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and his forte is analyzing how […]
Virtual worlds apart
What is virtual reality? On a technical level, it is a headset-enabled system using images and sounds to make the user feel as if they are in another place altogether. But in terms of the content and essence of virtual reality — well, that may depend on where you are. In the U.S., for instance, […]
MIT-Japan Program establishes the Patricia Gercik Memorial Fund
The MIT-Japan Program has announced the establishment of the Patricia Gercik Memorial Fund. The endowed fund will provide supplemental stipends to students seeking internships in Japan. Gercik served as managing director of the MIT-Japan Program for almost three decades and introduced hundreds of MIT students to Japanese culture, history, and in-country internship experiences. MIT-Japan is […]
CULTURE,COVID,CONTROVERSY TOKYO 2021 & BEIJING 2022
May 5 at 7pm, an Olympic Symposium hosted by 21M.848 PS: Advanced Theories of Sport with Special Guest Susan Brownell, Ph.D., internationally renowned expert on China and the Olympics. There have been only eight Olympics located in Asia in the 126-year history of the Games, three of them—in Korea, Japan, and China respectively—occurring within a […]
3 Questions: Richard Samuels on Japan’s 3.11 triple disaster and its impact 10 years later
Ten years ago, on March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by the most powerful earthquake in its recorded history. Of 9.1 magnitude by many accounts, the earthquake occurred off the Pacific coast of Tohoku and triggered a tsunami and meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Nearly 20,000 Japanese — and most of their […]
Lincoln Laboratory is designing a payload to integrate on Japanese satellites
According to Space-Track.org, approximately 21,000 objects of human origin are orbiting Earth, and about 1,500 of these objects are in or near geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Satellites in GEO support critical services, including commercial and military communications, weather forecasting, and missile launch warnings. The number of satellites and debris objects in the GEO belt is growing […]
Faculty seed projects grow into pandemic research opportunities
Global partnerships are a fundamental component of research at MIT — even during this time of suspended travel. MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) supports those connections via MISTI Global Seed Funds (GSF). GSF enables participating faculty teams to collaborate with international peers, either at MIT or abroad, to develop and launch joint research projects. MISTI […]
Fostering friendships and films from across the globe
What do you do when a pandemic shuts down international travel, and you can’t do your internship in Japan? For MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) students this summer, the answer was the Virtual Language Conversation Exchange with the Tokyo Institute of Technology (also known as Tokyo Tech). MIT Japan’s managing director, Christine Pilcavage, […]