About the Author: Kenichi KASHIWAGI is currently an associate professor at Alliance for Research on North Africa (ARENA), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. Before joining ARENA, he was researcher and economic adviser at Embassy of Japan in Cairo. He has a plenty of contributions related to issues on agriculture and rural development in Middle East and North Africa.
Mitsuteru IRIE is currently a professor in environmental hydraulics at Faculty of Engineering, University of Miyazaki, Japan and a visiting co- researcher of Alliance for Research on North Africa (ARENA), University of Tsukuba since 2016. His former position was an associate professor of ARENA until March 2016. He has a lot of contributions related to water resource management in North Africa.
Kazuichi SAKAMOTO:
After acquiring Ph.D at University of Tsukuba, he studied as a researcher at NIH/National Cancer Institute in the US and Osaka Biosciences Institute, and now he is a Professor of Faculty of Life Environmental Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. With the theme of healthy longevity, he studies bioactive substances that act on prevention and improvement of anti-aging and lifestyle-related diseases using plants, microorganisms, fermented foods etc. Based on the research results obtained, he also conducts application studies on functional foods, cosmetics, medicines and so on.
Muhammad Monirul ISLAM obtained B.Sc. degree in electrical and electronic engineering (EEE) from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2003. After obtaining Ph.D degree in applied physics from University of Tsukuba, Japan in 2010, he joined at The University of Tokyo as a postdoctoral researcher where he worked on high efficiency photovoltaic devices. Afterward, at 2013 he joined at Alliance for Research on North Africa (ARENA), University of Tsukuba as an assistant professor. His current research interests include reduction of silica to produce silicon material for application of solar cells, various solar energy materials, and defect characterization of semiconductors etc.
James B. COLE is a Senior Research Fellow of the U.S. National Research Council, and is hosted by the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. He is also a visiting professor at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Dr. Cole was previously a professor at the University of Tsukuba (Japan). His research area is mathematical physics applied to computational optics and photonics, and lately, he works on physics-based models for machine learning.
Kosuke MATSUBARA is Associate Professor of Urban Planning, at the Department of Policy and Planning Science, University of Tsukuba. He got a PhD from Keio University in 2005. Specializing in History of Urban Planning in the Middle East and North Africa, he was consecutively JSPS postdoctoral research fellow at Japan Center for Academic Cooperation at the University of Aleppo, postdoctoral researcher with French government scholarship at IPRAUS (Institut Parisien de Recherche Architecture, Urbanistique et Société), and research associate at ILCAA (Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa). He also worked for Syria as a JICA specialist for the Damascus Metropolitan Area Urban Planning and Development Project. His publication includes Conservation et Modernisation de la ville Historique de Fès, Maroc, (Tokyo: ILCAA, 2014).
Tamaki KITAGAWA has training in the methodology of hermeneutics of religious phenomena, completed the coursework for the Doctoral Program in Philosophy, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba after obtaining her Master degree in Literature. Since 2013, she has been a member of Alliance for Research on North Africa (ARENA) as a researcher in the section of Humanities and Social Sciences. She has implemented consecutive field surveys on the cultural aspect of bioresources in North Africa. Currently she is enrolled in Life Science Innovation Program, University of Tsukuba as a PhD student in Food Business.