At the sixth Digital Innovation Hub Workshop, the
regional scope of collaboration was expanded to include delegates from
the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, as well as expansion of the
number of participants from Japan and the U.S. Discussions focused on
promoting industry-academia collaboration in the areas of cybersecurity,
cyber-trust, and data governability for realizing the new digital age
of Society 5.0, which is the Japanese government’s vision for a
“human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the
resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates
cyberspace and physical space.”3 The need to establish rules for
academic and economic security based on the core values of reciprocity,
accountability and transparency was affirmed.
Future Path of the U.S.-Japan Digital Innovation Hub Workshops
The
six workshops that have been conducted to date have not only built
common awareness and mutual understanding among the participating
Japanese and U.S. universities, but also have begun to lead to concrete
collaborations. It seems the top-down indications of priorities are
incentivizing bottom-up research proposals and activities. Over the
years, joint funding from both governments has promoted enduring
relationships between research institutions in Japan and the United
States. For example, many of the partner universities have formed joint
research initiatives with funding from the Japanese New Energy and
Industrial Technology Development Organization’s (NEDO) “Realization of
Smart Society by Applying Artificial Intelligence Technologies” funding
scheme.
The following is a list of such multiyear projects by focus area and consortium member institutions:
- Project on mobility/natural language understanding
Partners Universities: Nagoya University, The Ohio State University, University of Texas at Dallas, Johns Hopkins University
This
project focuses on explainable AI, which describes the judgment basis
of AI in natural languages, to encourage human understanding of and
confidence in AI. The aim is to contribute to consumer confidence in
autonomous driving by making the action decisions made by AI more easily
understandable. - Project on health care and machine-human interaction
Partners Universities: Hiroshima University, Arizona State University
This
project focusses on how AI can be used for sustaining motivation for
physical training for lifelong maintenance of physical strength and
health. The goal is to develop AI-based coaching and self-care system
using wearable sensing and personal information collection gear. - Project on medical care and machine learning
Partners Universities: Tohoku University, Case Western Reserve University, Johns Hopkins University
One
of major issues in identifying antibodies for fighting infections is
the time and cost involved in the process. This project investigates the
use of machine learning technologies, bioinformatics, and computational
chemistry to develop new antibodies with shorter development time and
less cost. - Project on collaborative data analysis and machine learning modeling
Partners
Universities: University of Tsukuba, University of Delaware, Johns
Hopkins University, Purdue University, The Ohio State University
Obtaining
data for machine learning is becoming increasingly difficult due to
growing concern for protection of privacy and personal information. This
project is developing a new platform technology that enables data
sharing and collaborative analysis by using intermediate data
expression, or data without personal or sensitive information.
University of Tsukuba’s main area of focus will be on machine learning;
University of Delaware, security; John Hopkins, medical data analysis;
and Ohio State, smart cities.
In addition, in July 2019, the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and Japan Science and Technology
Agency (JST) launched the JST-NSF Research Grant for "Smart and
Connected Communities," to support research in smart and connected
community solutions. The call for application stated specific interests
in “disaster response and emergency management, precision agriculture,
cybersecurity of the electric grid and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices,
and wired and wireless networking.”
The seventh Digital
Innovation Hub Workshop, organized by The Ohio State University and the
University of Tsukuba, could not occur as planned in 2020 due to the
global coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, plans are moving forward to
host a virtual workshop in the near future. One organizing theme
proposed is Smart Mobility, a project that has been prioritized by Ohio
State’s College of Engineering and the Office of Research. The project’s
goal is to use emerging sensing, computational, and communications
technologies to solve transportation problems across all modes. This new
initiative incorporates education at the undergraduate and graduate
levels, research, innovation, economic development, and community
development. The initiative includes research in traditional areas such
as transportation and automotive research as well as including data
analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, sustainability,
energy, urban planning, smart infrastructure, human behavior and human
factors, cybersecurity, materials, manufacturing, connected and
automated vehicles, human health, and other areas.
Overall,
researchers within the Digital Innovation Hub hope to continue to
solidify the U.S.-Japan platform guided by a shared vision and values to
facilitate the exchange of researchers in important areas of digital
science such as AI, big data, and cybersecurity. The aim is to deploy
the discoveries for practical societal use by joining forces with U.S.
and Japanese industry and the support of both governments.