1. INTRODUCTION
In 1998, our graduate school (*1, hereafter IGSES) made a proposition to the Pusan National University (PNU) and the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) to establish a forum for students to interact with one another through "presenting research that integrates materials, energy and environment, using English". The two schools, PNU and POSTECH, were chosen because of their long standing relationship (*2) with IGSES, and particularly due to their relative proximity to Fukuoka. As IGSES bases its research and education on the three pillars of “Materials, Energy and Environment”, it was the incarnation of the ethos of its reorganization, “Profound, Broad and Integrated”.
The first Cross Straits Symposium on Materials, Energy and Environmental Sciences (CSS), so named with the wish to deepen friendship across the straits between Kyushu/Tsushima and Tsushima/South Korea, was held in November 1999, at the Chikushi Campus under the sponsorship of IGSES. The subsequent symposiums were organized and held by respective schools in rotation. In 2013, the symposium series evolved into the Cross Straits Symposium on Energy and Environmental Science and Technology (CSS-EEST) with participation from three countries, IGSES (Japan), PNU (Korea), and SJTU (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, PRC) (*3).
*1: The Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Engineering Sciences Research Department, Kyushu University (before March, 2000)/ The Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences (IGSES), Kyushu University (after April, 2000)
*2: PNU as an intercollegiate exchange school, and POSTECH as an interdepartmental exchange school. Since 2001, POSTECH became an intercollegiate exchange school as well.
*3: Kyushu University, PNU, and SJTU are the members of the Collaborative Graduate School Program for Global Human Resources Development in Energy and Environmental Science and Technology (the CAMPUS Asia EEST program).
