Strategic partnership grants awarded to research-teaching collaborations

The Princeton University-University of Tokyo Strategic Partnership awarded four faculty research and teaching collaborations. Awards include seed grants, up to $25,000, for short-term collaborations and larger grants, up to $200,000, for longer-term collaborations. 

Seed grants recipients are:

• “The Care Migration Industry” with Rhacel Parreñas, Doris Stevens Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Sachi Takaya, associate professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
• “Seamless Human-Al Co-Creation in Spatial Learning Environments” with Parastoo Abtahi, assistant professor of computer science, and Qing Zhang, project assistant professor

Project grants recipients are:

• “Groundwater Tools for A More Sustainable Water Future” with Reed Maxwell, William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, and Taikan Oki, professor and special advisor to the president
• “Paleo-Evo-Devo: Joining Education and Research to Integrate Evolution, Developmental Biology and the Fossil Record” with Christopher Griffin, assistant professor of geosciences, and Tatsuya Hirasawa, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

“This year’s call for collaborative research proposals through the strategic partnership received a record number of applications,” said James Raymo, Henry Wendt III '55 Professor of East Asian Studies, professor of sociology, director of the Global Japan Lab, and co-chair of the joint governance committee for the Tokyo-Princeton partnership. “From these uniformly outstanding proposals, the joint evaluation committee selected two three-year grants and two one-year seed grants for funding. These projects will support synergistic, innovative research via active collaboration involving student engagement and exchange. We are eager to see continued development and expansion of the deep connections between the two universities.”

The strategic agreement between Princeton and the University of Tokyo was established in 2013 and is one of two strategic partnerships — along with Humboldt University in Berlin — central to Princeton’s internationalization efforts. Since, it has supported 27 projects across 15 Princeton departments and centers. The Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) administers the program.  

“The strategic partnership with Princeton is the oldest and most popular initiative for international collaboration at the University of Tokyo,” said Jin Sato, special advisor to the president and professor of development studies and the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia and co-chair of UTokyo-Princeton Strategic Partnership. “I hope we continue to attract proposals from all disciplines, allowing faculty and students from both campuses to enrich their international experiences and foster the friendships that are more important than ever today.”

More about the funded projects: 

Groundwater Tools for A More Sustainable Water Future will leverage Princeton’s advanced groundwater modeling capabilities (ParFlow) and UTokyo’s expertise in modeling human water consumption and surface water processes to significantly enhance the realism and accuracy of both institutions’ existing water resource models. Such advancements will lead to more accurate assessments of freshwater availability and usage, ultimately enabling policymakers and water managers to develop scientifically sound, sustainable water management strategies.

Paleo-Evo-Devo: Joining Education and Research to Integrate Evolution, Developmental Biology and the Fossil Record will develop the integration of paleontology and evo-devo to advance research and education, with a particular focus on lung evolution during the dinosaur-to-bird transition. By analyzing the expression of Hox genes during the development of the respiratory organs of crocodylians, turtles and birds, and tying these observations to the fossil record, researchers will be able to clarify what changes occurred in the respiratory organs of ancestral animals that led to the evolution of avian respiration.

The Care Migration Industry seeks to identify and examine the care migration industry that links and facilitates migration to Japan from the Philippines using sequential ethnography, interviews and participant observation to capture the management of migration and experiences of migrants in key institutions across different stages of the migration cycle. The goal of the project is to examine the constitution of gender in care migration.

Seamless Human-Al Co-Creation in Spatial Learning Environments explores human-AI co-Creation for learning. Researchers will investigate how innovative interface design, particularly augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), can facilitate more seamless, embodied and intuitive co-creative learning experiences. This pilot project will focus on designing and testing an interface module for such a system; The goal is to enhance engagement and critical thinking, informing future AI-enhanced educational tools and fostering new research collaborations.