The Academic Committee is comprised of the president and a team of professors and academic consultants. The Committee works together to guide the quality and delivery of the Asian Future Leaders Scholarship Program, assist with developing scholarship criteria and eligibility requirements, review candidates for scholarships, and evaluate results.
Professor Katsuichi UCHIDA
President, BXAI
Senior Advisor and Professor Emeritus, Waseda University
Board Advisor, US-Japan Research Institute
Professor Katsuichi UCHIDA is Senior Advisor of Waseda University. Before assuming the current position, he served as Vice President for International Affairs from 2006 to 2014. He holds a B.A. in Law from Waseda’s School of Law, and later earned an M.A. and completed postgraduate study in the Graduate School of Law.
He became professor of Law in 1984, and he was subsequently named to be the founding Dean of Waseda’s School of International Liberal Studies in 2004, an interdisciplinary liberal arts program that has inspired similar undertakings throughout Asia.
His research field is Japanese Civil Law, he has published many articles and books on Japanese Civil Law, and was elected as a member of the Japan Science Council (Nihon Gakujutsu Kaigi).
Professor Uchida is also an acknowledged expert in international education and served as President of the Asia Pacific Association for International Education from 2014 to 2016.
He also served as President of the US-Japan Research Institute in Washington, DC, a joint undertaking by nine of Japan’s top universities to dispatch policy related researchers to the U.S. for 8 years.
Professor Min Gyo KOO
Member, BXAI
Professor, Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University
Professor Min Gyo Koo is a professor at Seoul National University’s (SNU) Graduate School of Public Administration, as well as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Irvine’s Korea Law Center. From 2015 to 2016, he was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, while from fall 2007 to spring 2010, he taught at Yonsei University. Aside from his academic roles, he has held several administrative positions at SNU, including Associate Dean and Dean of the Office of International Affairs (2016-2019) and Dean of Student Affairs (2021).
Professor Koo’s research interests involve East Asian political economy and maritime affairs. His latest publications include: The Political Economy and Law of International Trade: Between Free Trade Ideals and Mercantilist Bias (2021, in Korean) and “Is China Responsible for Its Maritime Militia’s Internationally Wrongful Acts? The Attribution of the Conduct of a Parastatal Entity to the State,” Business and Politics (Vol. 24 No. 3, 2022, pp. 277-291, with Sujin Yoo).
He holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Public Policy from SNU, and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. For more information, please visit his website: https://mingyo.snu.ac.kr.
Professor Shinnosuke OBI
Member, BXAI
Professor, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University
Former Vice-President, Keio University
Professor Shinnosuke Obi holds a Bachelor (BSc) and a Master of Science (MSc) in Mechanical Engineering from Keio University in Japan and a Doctor of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.) from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. He is a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Keio University’s Faculty of Science and Technology.
His research interests are in fluid mechanics, turbulence modeling, computational mechanics, and flow measurement techniques. He is a Fellow of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics.
He served as Vice-President for International Collaboration at Keio University from 2019 to 2021, and concurrently as Dean of the University’s International Center from 2017 to 2020. Prior to these appointments, he served as Chair of the International Affairs Committee at Keio University’s Faculty and Graduate School of Science and Technology for more than ten years. In this role, he was instrumental in developing various international programs, including double degrees between Keio and its partner institutions in Europe.
He is currently a member of various committees of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), both of which deal with scholarship programs for Japanese and international students.
Professor WU Zhipan
Former Vice President, Peking University
President, China Economic Law Research Institute
Director, Financial Law Research Center
Director, National Agency Affairs Management Research Center
Professor WU Zhipan is Former Vice President of Peking University, President of China Economic Law Research Institute, Professor of Peking University, Director of Financial Law Research Center and Director of National Agency Affairs Management Research Center.
Professor WU has been serving Peking University since 1988 when he received his PhD degree from PKU. Over the years, he has led numerous national-level research projects and seized any chances to enhance his research. In 1991-1992 he went to the US as a visiting scholar of Harvard University School of Law. In 1997 he re-visited the US as an Eisenhower Foundation Fellow.
Professor WU’s research interests lie in International Economic Law and Financial Law with ample research achievements. In 1995 he was a Nominee for China’s “Distinguished Young Jurist”. Over the years he has authored/co-authored or edited more than 10 books, including Commercial Bank and Law in Hong Kong, On the Commercial Law, Textbook of Commercial Bank Law, Textbook of Central Bank Law, International Financial Law, Financial Law, International Economic Law, Financial Globalization and China’s Financial Law, Typical Case Review on Financial Law, Capital Market and Law, Law and Practice of the Listed Companies, and “Four Color Theorem” in Financial Law.
Other current obligations of Professor WU’s include roles as Vice President of China Law Society, President of the Research Association of China’s Economic Laws of China Law Society, Vice President of China Society for Finance and Banking, Expert Counsellor for the Supreme People’s Court of China, Advisor for the Drafting Committee of China’s Commercial Bank Law of the People’s Bank of China and Vice Director of the “Steering Committees for Legal Education and for Master’s Degrees in Legal Studies of the Ministry of Education”, amongst others.