Chihiro Watanabe profile picture

Chihiro Watanabe

Guest Research Scholar

Cooperation and Transformative Governance Research Group

Advancing Systems Analysis

Biography

Chihiro Watanabe joined the Institute in July 1994 as Senior Advisor to the Director on Technology. He is conducting empirical analyses on the interaction between technological innovation and industrial development, the motivation of technological innovation, and the substitution of technology for constrained production factors, e.g., energy and environmental constraints.

Professor Watanabe graduated from Tokyo University with a bachelor's degree in engineering (urban planning) in 1968 and received his PhD (arts and sciences) in 1992, also from Tokyo University.

Professor Watanabe began his affiliation with the Japan Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1968 and has spent most of his career there, mainly working in the fields of industrial policy, industrial technology policy, and energy and environmental policies. He is former Deputy Director-General of Technology Development at MITI. He was a member of the UN's GEF (Global Environmental Facility) STAP (Science & Technology Advisory Panel) and Chairman of IEA's Working Party on End-Use Technology.

Professor Watanabe is currently Professor at the Department of Industrial Management, Tokyo Seitoku University, as well as Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore and Professor Emeritus of Tokyo Institute of Technology. Prof. Watanabe was Director of the Research Center for the Science of Institutional Management of Technology at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He served the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in the capacity of Senior Advisor to the Chairman on Technology. He is also associated with the United Nations University (UNU) as a visiting professor.

He has published widely in the fields of industrial technology, energy, and the environment and received the Minister of Education, Science & Technology Award, JSSPRM (Japan Society for Science Policy & Research Management) Award, and IAMOT (Intl. Association for Management of Technology) Research Award in 2008.


Last update: 28 MAR 2011