Earlier Highlights (15)

In April 2011, I visited Jun Makino, one of my long-time collaborators, at his new home base, the Interactive Research Center of Science, a newly established interdisciplinary educational and research organization, embracing all science departments at the Tokyo Institute for Technology.

In March 2011, I found that I could easily compute my Erdős number, and found to my surprise that my Erdős number = 3 (Paul Erdős wrote a paper with Harold Shapiro, who wrote a paper with Max Tegmark, who wrote a paper with me). I used the same web site to find out that my Einstein number = 4 (Albert Einstein wrote a paper with Peter Bergmann, who wrote a paper with Joel Lebowitz, who wrote a paper with David Ruelle, who wrote a paper with me).

In February 2011, I was interviewed by William Storrar, Director of the Center for Theological Inquiry about my work in interdisciplinary studies.

<- In December 2010, I gave a talk at Kyoto University, titled A Game of Arrows: Widely Interdisciplinary Research. It was placed on the web as a set of six YouTube videos.

Also in December, I visited the Center for Planetary Sciences at Kobe University, a lively new center that was founded three years ago.

<- In November 2010, I visited Jun Tani's lab at RIKEN in Tokyo, to discuss with Jun Tani how Husserlian phenomenology may be useful in robotics.

Also in November, I visited Shigeru Taguchi at Yamagata University, in order to start a collaboration on the use of Husserlian phenomenology in various forms of interdisciplinary research.

In September 2010, I started my fall visit at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Kyoto University, an interdisciplinary organization covering a broad range of mathematics, from pure to applied, including the history of mathematics.

<- In August 2010, I attended the MODEST-10 conference in Beijing, where I gave the summary talk at the end of the meeting. The vibrant international atmosphere at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, where part of the conference was held, was especially impressive.

In July 2010, I visited Dan Zahavi, professor in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, to continue our discussions about how to introduce Husserlian phenomenology to a wider audience.

<- In June 2010, I visited Kyoto University, and I was impressed to hear about a new project Paraiso (Portuguese for `paradise': PARallel Automated Integration Scheme Organizer) that was started there by Takayuki Muranishi, in the interdisciplinary Hakubi group. His aim is to make it much easier to write highly parellel computer code for scientific simulations.

In May 2010, I visited NAOJ, the National Astronomical Observatory Japan, in Tokyo, where I met Kimihiko Hirao, Deputy Director of the Next-Generation Supercomputer R & D Center in Kobe, Japan, and his group who were introduced to the 4D2U scientific visualization project. It was interesting to hear about the plans for the new Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, for which Hirao will be the director, and which will open this summer.