Emerging Research Leader Selection

Dr. Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Director of the Urban Informatics Lab, has been selected to participate in the 2016 Australia Japan Emerging Research Leaders Exchange Program, supported by the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE). The program is targeted at researchers who are emerging leaders in science and technology research to help consolidate their international collaborations and developments. Jaz is one of eight Australians who were invited to participate in the program, which ATSE notes, “is an outstanding result” as the process was highly competitive this year.

With the global innovation focus shifting from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics), Jaz is in a strategic position to initiate and further develop long term, transdisciplinary collaborations between Australia and Japan, building on her research and development in three inter-related domains of self-care and mutual aid; social entrepreneurship, and; co-creative urban transformation.

Jaz will visit universities and research organisations in Japan for two weeks in November 2016, to establish linkages around the priority area of “Technologies for the promotion of healthy ageing and wellbeing,” specifically in the two inter-related domains of urban informatics and intergenerational social entrepreneurship in the digital era. She is excited to go back to Japan where she led the project Sapporo World Window and she’s looking forward to – many – amazing tofu and matcha feasts!