Osaka City University (OCU) each year organizes an international symposium for which it invites top-class researchers in every field from around the world. Through the symposium OCU presents its state-of-the-art research activities to a domestic and international audience.??
This year’s international symposium will revolve around the 3 important urban-related themes of ‘Energy & Environment’, ‘Safety, Security & Health’ and ‘Creative Management’ and will showcase experimental urban renewal models. At the symposium worldwide experts will exchange views and demonstrate ideas, technologies and processes to build attractive and comfortable cities. In the last session ‘Osaka 20 years from now – Re-inventing the City’ the theme of the symposium will be approached through drama in an academic theater play.

We would like to invite all those interested to attend!?

Sessions Outline

17 September (Tuesday) Knowledge Capital?Congrès Convention Center

Session 1: Creative Management 10:00-12:00
Business schools around the world nowadays offer workshops that use a variety of artistic techniques such as theater, design, or LEGO blocks, to develop leadership, change management and entrepreneurial skills. Osaka City University Graduate School of Business is also giving educationally highly effective theater workshops as part of its ‘Health/Social Care Innovation Management’ evening MBA program for incumbent health/social care professionals, in cooperation with business schools in Japan and abroad.
For this session, Associate Professor Steven S. Taylor (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the United States), who has given many theater workshops at business schools and companies world-wide as a university professor, an actor, a playwright, and an OD/HRD consultant, will lead a special public workshop to develop ‘collaboration’ skills, which are indispensable for organizational innovation and entrepreneurship, with scientists, engineers, health/social care professionals and graduate students of management "on-stage".

Session 2: Artificial Photosynthesis (1) 13:00-15:00
The technological realization of artificial photosynthesis is receiving urgent attention of researchers worldwide. Its realization would make it possible to produce solar fuels such as hydrogen and alcohol from water and carbon dioxide using solar energy.
For this session we invited Professor Richard J. Cogdell (FRS (Fellow of the British Royal Society)) of the University of Glasgow, the leading center of artificial photosynthesis research in Europe, as our main guest. As an esteemed Fellow of the Royal Society, we have asked him to deliver a lecture with a wide perspective on the production of solar fuels by artificial photosynthesis, explaining the current situation and future development of the research centers in Europe and speaking about the ethics involved. For OCU, Professor Yutaka Amao (Professor at the OCU Advanced Research Institute for Natural Science and Technology and Vice-Director of the OCU Research Center for Artificial Photosynthesis) will explain the practice of hydrogen and methanol production using solar energy from a bioengineering point of view.

Session 3: Health Science Innovation though Neuroscience / Neuroesthetics and Neurowellness 15:30-17:30
For health science to advance in order to combat the heavy daily stresses that we experience, and which often leads, among other syndromes, to the debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome, it is becoming increasingly important to address how we can harness the brain’s ability to adapt to new means of communication and develop strategies to battle fatigue through artistic creativity and communication. In this session, we want to enquire how we can create important new openings to further advance health science through neuroscience. For this, leading experts will update us on the latest neuroscienctific knowledge, focusing on communication, art and anti-fatigue and discuss the current state and future developments in the new disciplines of neuroesthetics and neurowellbeing.?

18 September (Wednesday) Osaka Prefecture University I-site Namba

Session 4: Community and Creativity 10:00-12:00
How can we best achieve creative city renewal? That is being tried out in many places in the world. In this session we will look at the urban planning and design aspects of how ‘Community and Creativity’ serves as an engine for creativity in 21st century cities around the world. In Asia, we will look at what is happening in the exceptionally fast growing cities of China. In Europe, we will look at the success of Barcelona in reviving its old city center. In North-America we will look at the management of urban resource utilization and revival. Last, we will present and discuss methods for the revitalization of the city of Osaka to see how we can creatively re-invent Osaka over the next 20 years.

18 September (Wednesday) Osaka City University?Media Center?

Session 5: Artificial Photosynthesis (2) 13:00-15:00
In the United States President Obama announced to spend 15 billion yen over 5 years to develop fuel generation through artificial photosynthesis. For this session we invited the leader of this project, Professor Nathan Lewis, Director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and professor at the California Institute of Technology, to talk about current research and future developments of artificial photosynthesis research at JCAP. For OCU, Professor Nobuo Kamiya, Professor at the Advanced Research Institute for Natural Science and Technology and Director of the Research Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (ReCAP), will explain the detailed structure analysis of the MnCaO5 cluster, the biological catalyst that generates oxygen by splitting water produced by plants, and current research and future developments at ReCAP.

Session 6: Smart Energy Networks for Cities 15:30-17:30
The City of Osaka is promoting the ‘Sakashima District Smart Community Demonstration Project” as part of its energy policy within the Kansai Innovation International Strategic Comprehensive Special Zone. One of the aims is to stimulate the area by involving new players in this energy project. By laying heat and energy transport pipelines along a train line in the urban Sakashima district, Osaka can build an electricity and heat transfer infrastructure at low cost and test CO2 reduction effects, wide-area operability and disaster prevention aspects. We will explain the research we are doing to?build regional highly efficient distributed energy resource systems that enable new and old large buildings to use renewable energy, in order to secure a stable energy supply, low carbon usage and emergency electricity and energy sources for existing urban areas.

18 September (Wednesday)?Sumiyoshi Shrine

Session 7: Community and Safety 16:00-17:00
In this session we will discuss safety, security and well-being in Sumiyoshi-ward, the location of Osaka City University. We especially would like to focus on urban disaster prevention from a scientific and cultural point of view, whilst looking at ‘community revitalization’, ‘city redevelopment’ and ‘regional industrial promotion’, all problems that are common in modern societies. Sumiyoshi-ward is located in the Sumiyoshi area, which started to develop already from around 1800. It accommodates many different lifestyles and has experienced various disasters. Nowadays, although it still is a prime residential area of Osaka, problems such as isolation of individual inhabitants, decline of local industries and insufficient disaster prevention capacity are becoming increasingly obvious. We will discuss a variety of topics, including disaster prevention by the city and by the community, and people’s lifestyles, history and culture.

19 September (Thursday) Osaka City University Media Center

Session 8: Open Source Approach for Building Resilient Communities 10:00-12:00
Though mathematics and physics are often considered as pure theory and experimental research, in this symposium we shall emphasize their social nature and applications, especially the possibility of creating big communities using “free open source software”. We want to show you how an Open Source Community led Approach can bring about better education and help in improving the socio-economic and Environmental Fabric of Societies. We present the following topics: （1） Definition and Quantification of Resilient Communities based on “Human Security Index”, （2） Enhancing Education in Basic Science - Example of “MathLibre” Community, （3） Open Approach to Building Spatial Data Infrastructure - Example of Open Initiatives in Spatial Information Science, etc.

Session 9: Young Researchers' Presentations 13:00-15:00
Four recipients of the Osaka City University Presidential Awards for Encouragement will give presentations about their research.
-Eriko Sato - Precise Synthesis of Acrylic Polymers and Application to High Performance Dismantlable Adhesive Materials
-Keisuke Yaku - Neuroprotective effect of 1'-acetoxychavicol acetate extracted from Alpinia galangal
-Go Yonezawa - Urban Spatiotemporal Transformation and Sustainability of Hanoi, Vietnam Using Open Source
-Kazunobu Okazaki - Practical method for the privention of heat related illness in the elderly

19 September (Thursday) Osaka City University Tanaka Memorial Hall

Session 10: Scholarly drama [Osaka 20 years from now ? Re-inventing the City] 15:30-17:30
In Session 10, all of the coordinators of the other sessions except for Session 9 will come together in a single venue and talk about the theme of “Osaka 20 Years From Now: Re-inventing of the City.” In the normal course of things, there would be reports summarizing each of the separate sessions, and after a wide-ranging general discussion the symposium would wind up in a predictable fashion. However, one of the keywords of this symposium is ‘creativity,’ and since it is precisely that creativity which is the necessary key to breaking new ground in implementing and researching the re-invention of the city, we have decided to creatively convert Session 10 from a simple oral report presentation into a kind of drama, which will be a ‘scholarly drama.’ The setting for our drama is 20 years in the future, in other words in the Osaka of 2033. What kind of Osaka will there be then? We really hope that you will enjoy it.