On March 11th, 2021, Prof. Ali Jadbabaie, JR East Professor of Engineering, and Head of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which is in partnership with FORUM8, did a special seminar online on the theme of the front lines of civil engineering, architecture, and environmental engineering.

At the beginning of the seminar, Dr. Keiji Yano, Director of MIT ILP Japan, gave an address and introduced MIT and Prof. Ali Jadbabaie. MIT is a prestigious school in Cambridge, and is one of the top engineering universities in the world, leading the way in cutting-edge technology. ILP is an organization that was started to help the process of applying MIT's research results to the real society, and it bridges MIT and its 260 members, FORUM8 being one of them.

Prof. Ali Jadbabaie stated that the vision and mission is to build a smart infrastructure system as a scientific foundation for people to live in harmony with nature and the environment. He also showed that it is a system that ensures sustainability across scales, from nanoscales to global planet scales that take climate and the environment into account.

His research has three components: 1) data, systems, and computation; 2) mechanics, materials science, new materials, clean infrastructure systems, and sustainable tool development; and 3) environmental, ecological, and microbial research. He stated that 3) is the area he is focusing on the most to solve new problems using new modern tools.

He aims to develop human resources with the understanding of software systems as well as basics of infrastructure, and introduced the following case studies he is working on: 1) Creation of an API system that creates maps using big data and enables people to collect road information and compare road quality even at home; 2) Poverty alleviation through the development of new food products, such as bananas coated with silk to prevent corrosion; 3) Research on ancient self-repairable materials from Roman times, and the development of sustainable concrete made of them.

In the issue of mass disposal of food, a listener asked him if it is necessary to establish a demand chain from the consumer side. He answered that while excessive food waste is conspicuous in developed countries such as the United States, there is also the problem of excessive food shortages, and the current pandemic situation revealed that the just-in-time manufacturing approach is inappropriate, and the data-driven food production is the way to go.

Introduction of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Development of new food to fight poverty	Study on self-repairable materials in Ancient Rome