Daigoro Isobe (The 14th president of JSCES)

 The Japan Society for Computational Engineering and Science (JSCES) was founded as a voluntary association in 1995 following the success of the 3rd World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCMIII), which was held in Chiba, Japan, in 1994. The society became a General Incorporated Association in 2010 owing to the hard work of our pioneers who constituted bylaws and regulations from scratch and revised and maintained them according to social needs. Thanks to our distinguished senior members, the governing structure of the JSCES has now reached a stable state. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has in the past few years enforced minimization of social activities worldwide, which of course has largely affected the activities of the JSCES as well; in particular, at international and annual conferences, seminars, and schools. I believe that it is now time to return to the starting point and rethink what engineers are really for, how an academic society should act and support them, and how the society should have a relationship with the surrounding communities. It is true that the progress in the fields of computational engineering and computational mechanics is now more known to the public than before; however, it is still very important for the JSCES to promote and accelerate activities that match social and industrial needs by enhancing the information transmission capacity as one of the largest responsible incorporated associations in this field.

Under these circumstances, I would like to raise the following three main policies for my term of office:

(A) Endorsement of engineers in the fields of computational engineering/computational mechanics and promotion of international activities

The JSCES will support and promote engineers, including younger members in the fields of computational engineering/computational mechanics, through annual conferences, study groups, short courses, and summer camps. In addition, the JSCES will manage funds aiming to support the members participating in international conferences organized by the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) and will organize, co-organize, and support conferences, such as the WCCM and the International Conference on Computational Engineering and Science for Safety and Environmental Problems (COMPSAFE), to offer engineers opportunities to exchange their thoughts and ideas on a global stage. Regardless of the format, whether virtual, hybrid, or physical, the JSCES will consider a more attractive and fruitful framework for the members to join, targeting the post-COVID era.

(B) Enhancement and reinforcement of information transmission capacity as a responsible incorporated association

The JSCES will publish high-quality transactions, academic journals, and books as one of the largest responsible incorporated associations in this field. In particular, the JSCES will proceed to discuss the handling of journal papers that include possible benchmark examples to be republished as data papers. Furthermore, the JSCES will enrich its homepage content and publicize its activities worldwide.

(C) Promotion and acceleration of activities that match social and industrial needs

The JSCES will secure transparency and fairness in its administration to be trusted by communities worldwide and cooperate with other academic societies to promote and accelerate activities that match social and industrial needs. The JSCES will maintain fiscal consolidation following ethics as a General Incorporated Association and aim to increase the number of members by activating further publicization.

It is perhaps a difficult time now to enhance academic activities, but the JSCES will keep providing fruitful information and will actively offer physical (or virtual, but interesting) events to proceed to the next step after this pandemic.

Daigoro Isobe
1994 Doctor of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
1994 Research Associate, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
1995 Assistant Professor, Institute of Engineering Mechanics, University of Tsukuba
2013 Professor, Division of Engineering Mechanics and Energy, University of Tsukuba


He is the director of the JSCES (2012-), vice-president of the JSCES (2020-2022), IACM General Council member (2013-), chairman of the 3rd International Workshops on Advances in Computational Mechanics (IWACOM-III) (2014-2015), and chairman of the COMPSAFE 2020 (2018-2020).
He is a recipient of the Ichimura Award (2014), the Kawai Medal, JSCES (2015), the Computational Mechanics Achievements Award, the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) (2019) and was approved as a fellow of the JSME in 2021. He is interested in structural collapse analysis, motion analysis of nonstructural components, control scheme of robotic architectures, and development of torque-cancelling systems.