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Toward an International Academic Career

April 23, 2019
By 19642

Mihoko Sakurai, Sylff fellow at Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus in 2013, is currently a senior research fellow and associate professor at the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM) of the International University of Japan. She is dedicated to helping build a more sustainable society through her research on resilient information systems. While receiving a Sylff fellowship at Keio University, she applied for and received an SRA award to study abroad at the University of Georgia in the United States. This experience strengthened her desire to pursue a research career from an international perspective. This is the story about her international academic career started from the SRA award.

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My Journey from the United States to Norway

Several months after living in Athens, Georgia (United States), for around six months in total, during which my living expenses were partially covered by the Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) program, I finished writing my doctoral dissertation. I received a PhD in 2015 from the Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University.

Mihoko, left, and Rick.

My experience in the United States eventually took me on a wonderful journey. In summer 2014, I was at the University of Georgia (UGA) having a chat with my supervisor, Professor Richard T. Watson (Rick), on the way back to the office from his lecture. In the morning of the same day, he told me about a job opening at the University of Agder (UiA) in Norway. The university was offering a postdoctoral research fellow position in the area of information systems and disaster management. The description of the position fit well with my background, and Rick knew people well in that university.

The journey to the United States had already been something big to me, since it was my first time staying abroad for an extended period. I had not thought about working abroad after my stay at UGA. At the same time, however, my eyes had gradually opened during those months. I found that a university is a very international place, something that I did not feel much when I was at Keio. My curiosity was expanding. I started dreaming of having more international experiences at the beginning of my academic career. I decided to apply for the position.

City of Kristiansand, Norway.

One year later, in summer 2015, I flew to Kristiansand, a beautiful town in southern Norway. I was given a two-year position at UiA, where I ultimately worked for three years. It was indeed a wonderful and exceptional journey.

There are only a few so-called universities in Norway. On the other hand, there are many institutions called university colleges. The merger of university colleges was advanced as a national policy over the past decade plus, and UiA was founded by merging several regional university colleges in 2007. UiA has about 10,000 students and about 1,000 people working as academic and administrative staff. There are six faculties, and I belonged to the Department of Information Systems of the Faculty of Social Sciences. The department employed around 20 people, including PhD students; a PhD student is a paid job in Norway, which is an extremely good environment compared to the Japanese context.

The Research Environment in Norway

Universities in Norway are differentiated from university colleges in that they have PhD courses and focus on international-level research. The Research Council of Norway releases annual rankings of academic conferences and journals. Each publication is scored in these rankings, and each department reports the points earned by its academic staff to the university every year. These results indirectly affect budget allocations within the university. Individual research funding can be obtained according to the points. I was surprised to learn that Norwegian universities organize research activities in such a systematic way. Each department has research groups and collaborates not only with internal researchers but also quite actively with external researchers.

Members of the EU project and staff of the Kristiansand city office.

In my case, my research activities were based on a large-scale research project funded by the European Commission, a multinational version of Japan’s Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI). The project was called Smart Mature Resilience, or SMR for short. It received a total of 4.6 million euros in funding over three years. The participants comprised four universities, seven local governments, and two nonprofit organizations from eight countries in the European Union. The competition was intense, as only 10 percent of proposals were accepted. I was fortunate to join the project.

The project was very ambitious, having as its main aim the creation of universal knowledge by people from different countries based on research activities. Collaboration with practitioners was strongly encouraged. Even within Europe, there are diverse historical and cultural backgrounds, and different customs mean different languages. I found that it was not easy to have a common awareness. While meetings were regularly held by web conference, there were opportunities for project members to gather once every few months in consortium member countries: Spain, Norway, Britain, Sween, Germany, Latvia, Italy, and Denmark. The budget for travel expenses was huge, which I understand is one of the project’s uniqueness, enhancing collaboration between people of different backgrounds. From an efficiency point of view, it may be better to focus only on domestic projects, as this would make it easier to create a common understanding of the subject. But international projects have special benefits not found in domestic projects, and all things were priceless experiences for me.

There is another collaboration network called the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). Twenty-two countries from all continents, including Australia and the United States, participate in the inter-university network on information systems research. Only one university can participate from each country, and UiA represents Norway. A workshop is held once a year, and this network provides a platform to generate proposals for research funding including EU projects.

Resilience Research in Europe

After moving to Norway, I continued writing papers with Rick. Our aim is to elaborate the notion of resilience under the context of disaster and information systems. We used the concept of capital, which Rick has been studying for many years, as an analysis lens in revealing how information systems and their surroundings (including people) recovered after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011. For my dissertation, I proposed a framework for “Frugal Information Systems” as a means of achieving a resilient society. In the capital paper, we submitted practical insights on how to make information systems more frugal and resilient. We used different types of capital in this context: economic, human, social, organizational, and symbolic. Our initial idea was presented in the International Hawaii Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) in 2016 and awarded as the best paper under the digital government research track. The paper reports three cases from the field survey on the earthquake and shows how each capital interacted with the others and formed a recovery process after the devastating earthquake and tsunami. We are currently elaborating this paper and trying to submit it to the top-tier journal in the information systems research domain.

While working on the earthquake, I had been involved in a large-scale EU research project called SMR, as discussed above. The overall purpose was to develop, test, and demonstrate a pilot version of the European Resilience[1] Management Guideline. The guideline comprises five tools to promote city resilience: the Resilience Maturity Model, Risk Systemicity Questionnaire, Resilience Building Policies, City Resilience Dynamics Model, and Resilience Information Portal. Each tool can guide cities to achieve high-level resilience maturity in different ways. I was mainly involved in the development of the Resilience Information Portal. The portal aims to create a collaborative environment among key partners (first responders and citizens) in resilience building activities. We developed the prototype of the portal and a standardization document that can be used by non-project members in creating such a portal. After a three-year project period, three series of standardization documents were developed. Five tools are available online.

Looking Back on My Output in the Past Three Years

During my three years in Norway, I produced two journal publications and eleven conference papers. It was indeed a very productive period. I may have worked too much. I also had the opportunity to co-teach three courses and offer several guest lectures to Norwegian students, which gave me great teaching experiences. I met wonderful people from all over the world through international conferences, the SMR project, and a researchers’ network centered around UiA. I am grateful for the environment and know this is not something that is available to everyone who wants it.

I hope that my story about this journey that began in the United States can give insights to those who aspire to develop an international career. I felt strong anxiety in my first year in Norway, but a colleague of mine encouraged me by saying, “Take it easy, have fun!” I always remember this comment when I feel any fear.

As a concluding remark, I would like to thank the Sylff Association for supporting me in my journey toward a wonderful academic career.

University of Agder

[1] The ability of a system, community, or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to, and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions. (2009 UNISDR Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction)

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A Disaster-Resilient, “Frugal” Information System

September 26, 2014
By 19642

In March 2011, the Tohoku region of Japan suffered the worst earthquake and tsunami disaster to ever hit the country. Hampering rescue and relief activities in the immediate aftermath of the quake was the serious damage to the communications infrastructure. How can an information system be built that is more resilient to major disasters? Mihoko Sakurai, a Sylff fellow at Keio University, believes that the key to such a system is “frugality.”

* * *

The Arch, the university’s academic symbol.

My current research on disaster-resilient information systems (IS) was prompted by the March 11, 2011, earthquake in northern Japan—the largest quake the country ever experienced. The Great East Japan Earthquake measured 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history. The tsunami caused by the quake reached 40 meters in height and hit Tohoku’s eastern coastline, severely damaging a very wide area and triggering great confusion. Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency reports that 18,958 people died, 6,219 were injured, and 2,655 are missing as of March 2014; 127,291 houses were totally lost, and more than 1,000,000 were partially destroyed.

Field Survey in Japan

The earthquake and tsunami exposed the vulnerability of Japan’s information communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, as the loss of communication greatly hampered rescue and relief efforts and more than likely increased the death toll.

From November 2011 to February 2012, eight months after the earthquake, I and other members of our research team conducted structured interviews with 13 municipal governments in the areas hardest hit by the earthquake. The objective of the survey was to ascertain how ICT systems inside municipal offices were affected by the earthquake. We visited Miyako, Otsuchi, Kamaishi, Rikuzentakata, Kesennuma, Minamisanriku, Ishinomaki, Higashimatsushima, Sendai, Minamisoma, and Iwaki, as well as evacuation centers in Namie and Futaba.

These municipalities are located in the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima. Under the administrative structure of the Japanese government, municipalities occupy the third rung. At the top of the ladder is the national government; this is followed by the 47 prefectural governments and 1,742 municipal governments (as of May 1, 2013) at the local level. The size of municipal governments varies enormously; while big cities like Osaka and Yokohama have a few million residents, some small villages have a population of less than 1,000.

There are several types of municipalities in Japan, namely, shi (cities with a population of over 50,000), cho or machi (towns variously defined by each prefecture), son or mura (villages), and tokubetu-ku (the 23 special wards of Tokyo). The populations of the municipalities we visited varied from 2,000 to 70,000. Almost all of them were small cities. Legally speaking, the role of municipal governments is to provide public services to citizens and, perhaps most importantly, to maintain a registry of all residents—the data that serves as the foundation of government. Prefectures are defined more loosely as wide-area governments.

Our survey included questions on preparedness, the level of damage, and the recovery process of ICT equipment, including power supply, network connectivity, information systems, and related facilities.

Need for Disaster-Resilient Systems

Analyses of these cases led us to conclude that building a robust system that never fails is impossible and to recognize that creative field responses are of crucial importance. The immediate problem after the March 2011 earthquake was the failure of the supporting infrastructure needed to run the information systems. The physical destruction of servers also meant that residential records were lost in some areas. The survey also revealed that a uniform plan across all municipalities would not have been appropriate, since the situation in various towns and cities—and the necessary responses—were continually changing. Government buildings were generally sturdy, and most survived the tsunami. But this did not mean that the ICT system survived intact. Some municipal offices did not recover their information systems for four months.

This should prompt a rethinking of ICT system design to ensure that communication can be maintained, especially in the immediate aftermath of a major disaster. Resilient systems are needed that can maintain or recover their core functions flexibly and quickly. Flexibility is required to enable creative responses in a disaster situation using minimal resources. Such systems are particularly important for municipal governments, which need to embark on rescue and life-saving activities immediately after a disaster.

This is a totally different approach from that required during normal times. The national government has tried to create robust and special systems for disaster situations, but they have not always had the required resilience in the face of actual severe situations. Once they are destroyed, moreover, they cannot be restored quickly.

“Frugality” as an Essential Concept

The “frugal information system” concept can be useful in building such a resilient system. This is an information system that is “developed and deployed with minimal resources to meet the preeminent goal of the client.” Such a system would be important under disaster situations, when people have limited access to resources. A frugal system is characterized by the four U’s: “universality,” the drive to overcome the friction of information systems’ incompatibilities; “ubiquity,” the drive to access information unconstrained by time and space; “uniqueness,” the drive to know precisely the characteristics and location of a person or entity; and “unison,” the drive for information consistency.

Mobile devices can serve as a standard platform to meet these “4U” requirements.

They were indeed the most widely used means of communication by individuals in the wake of the 3.11 disaster. The mobile infrastructure was restored with greater ease than other systems (ubiquitous network). They have open interfaces (universality). The phone number or SIM ID can be used for the identification of individuals (uniqueness). And as soon as the networks are restored, data can be backed up on cloud data storage (unison). There is the additional benefit that power can be easily supplied to the handsets.

Smartphones can be particularly useful devices in a disaster situation. People are gaining familiarity with these phones through daily use, which is very important under panic situations. Following a disaster, people are unlikely to use tools with which they are unfamiliar.

Future Research

I am currently working on a project to build a prototype smartphone application that employs the principles of resilient design. A test will be conducted in October 2014 at Tome, Miyagi, which was one of the cities heavily affected by the disaster. The initial test will involve the use of smartphones as part of an evacuation center’s operations during the first week. Three key functions will be tested, namely, (1) the identification and registration of people at the center using their phone numbers or SIM IDs, (2) recording people’s arrival and departure, and (3) creating an evacuee database. Using the smartphone’s number, the application can enable the transmission of information on such required items as medicine and milk for infants.

Smartphone applications designed to support disaster victims already exist. But none are suitable for municipal disaster relief operations. If municipal officials use the same applications as residents, the sharing of information can be greatly facilitated, enabling a smoother delivery of relief supplies. What we need to do is to make sure such applications are operational and widely used before they are needed and are quickly made available after a disaster.

The Great East Japan Earthquake posed what might have been the biggest possible challenge to an information society, making us acutely aware that our daily life—as well as government operations to help people in need—rely heavily on the ICT infrastructure. The performance of nearly all activities in advanced economies has become dependent on ICT, and disasters illustrate the fragility of this dependence. The earthquake shook our confidence in technology, and a study of its effects indicates the importance of designing systems with a recovery model in mind.

The University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.

Massive disasters are likely to become more common around the world in the years to come ¹, as suggested by the fact that there were three times as many natural disasters between 2000 and 2009 as between 1980 and 1989². I believe that a correct understanding of resilience and the development of information systems designed to withstand severe conditions can make the world a safer plain which to live. This research is certainly not over.

In closing, I would like to express my gratitude to the Tokyo Foundation for supporting my research abroad. Thanks to an SRA award, I was able to conduct research at the University of Georgia, where my ideas were greatly enhanced under the supervision Dr. Richard Watson—regents professor and J. Rex Fuqua distinguished chair for Internet strategy in the Department of Management Information Systems at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business—who advocates the notion of a frugal information system.

¹http://www.emdat.be/natural-disasters-trends, last accessed June 8 2014.
²http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/steady-increase-in-climate-rel/19974069, last accessed June 8 2014.

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Sylff Winds Workshops and Concerts: An Exemplary Collaboration between Cultures

October 23, 2012
By 19673

Last April, when I first heard about the Tokyo Foundation’s project, Together in Tohoku Workshops and Concert, I was immediately interested. I had never been to Japan, and the simple thought of making the trip was most exciting. When I learned of the project’s scale, I was even more eager to participate, for such a combined artistic and humanitarian initiative resonates profoundly with my own vision of the artist’s role in society as a citizen-musician.

A year and a half ago, when I saw the tragic events experienced by the inhabitants of the Tohoku region, I felt extremely sad and helpless by the enormity of it all. I was frustrated not to be able to help and could only observe the horror unfold on my television screen. I saw a nation deploy all its energy and courage to try to save its citizens. The Sylff project in Tohoku, in which I was lucky enough to participate, provided me with an opportunity to act and contribute—at my own level—in playing a small part in rebuilding the devastated region.

From what I observed, working with 18 saxophonists within an overall group of a hundred musicians aged 13 to 22, I felt that the orientation of the Japanese students was significantly different from that of the French. The Japanese have very good ensemble techniques and excellent orchestral practice habits. My contribution was needed in the area of individual technique. The reverse would have been true in France. This can probably be explained by the difference between the two music education systems. The students had a wonderful spirit, and showed a great thirst to learn.

At the beginning of the week, I found my group very reserved and shy. But this didn’t last long! In the end, each one showed himself to be extremely open-minded and determined. At first, we “coaches” felt hindered by our ignorance of Japanese and by the paucity of translators and interpreters, but this soon gave way, and the magic of music’s universality allowed us to give several private lessons. Personally, I found the challenge of questioning my own teaching methods and ways of communing particularly rewarding. On the last day, to my great surprise, during the small reception given after the special concert in Suntory Hall, I realized that many of the students actually spoke a little English but had not dared say a word!

The experience of working with these young people, victims of the tragedy, was a profoundly moving and exciting one for me. Behind their apparent timidity, I met sensitive, generous, and thoughtful human beings. In fact, I discovered an entire culture during my week in Japan.

Visiting Ishinomaki was a highlight. Seeing this devastated city was a real shock. So many empty spaces in the middle of the city, formerly occupied by houses and buildings, in which grass was growing back; the numerous houses whose ground floors had been destroyed; the school whose blackened walls were destroyed by fire after being covered by the sea; and the incongruous everyday objects still dotting the landscape: They all bore testimony to the ravages of the tragedy.

The concert we performed in this city was both sad and inspiring, coming as it did following our tour of the city by bus. We saw members of the public, often with tears in their eyes, listening to us perform in a community center which had doubtless been used as a shelter. I hope we were able to transmit our sense of hope and caring.

The week in Japan also allowed me to meet Sylff fellows from Paris, New York, and Vienna and to share an experience of living in communion with people I did not know but with whom I shared common interests. I loved meeting the Sylff coordinators—such caring people—and all the extraordinary volunteers involved, including the translators and musicians. I really hope to stay in touch with the people involved in the project.

Following our Suntory Hall concert, David Panzl and I started developing a joint chamber project which should lead to further concerts in Europe. Thanks to Facebook, we have also been able to share pictures and to stay in touch with many of the students.

In the end, I believe I learned at least as much as the students we were there to coach. This experience has made a profound impact on me, and I think how lucky I was to be a part of it. I’d be delighted to participate in similar projects in the future! As students, we often travel—sometimes long distances—to reach teachers in academies or music courses. Here, it was the opposite, with “coaches” from different countries coming together to work with a group of students, to share know-how, and make music together. The presence of outstanding musical personalities, such as Keiko Abe, was also important. The precious moments we shared, in which the concept of distance become relative, struck me as being truly original. This collaboration between cultures will be, I hope, a precursor of future ones.

I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Sylff program, the Tokyo Foundation, the Paris Conservatoire, Juilliard, and Vienna, as well as all the many project partners.