IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Aging & Gerontology (AGen) > AGen2022 > Speakers

Speakers

This page provides information about presenters. For details of presentations and other programming, please visit the Programme page.

  • Debbie Howard
    Debbie Howard
    Aging Matters International, Japan
  • Kathryn M. Lavender
    Kathryn M. Lavender
    National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA)
  • Hee Rin Lee
    Hee Rin Lee
    Michigan State University, United States
  • James W. McNally
    James W. McNally
    University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging
  • Lowell Sheppard
    Lowell Sheppard
    Never Too Late Academy, Japan
  • Ryuji Yamazaki-Skov
    Ryuji Yamazaki-Skov
    Osaka University, Japan
  • Keith W. Miller
    Keith W. Miller
    University of Missouri – St. Louis, United States

Previous Speakers

View details of speakers at past AGen conferences via the links below.

AGen2021 AGen2020 AGen2019
AGen2018 AGen2017 AGen2016
AGen2015
Debbie Howard
Aging Matters International, Japan

Biography

Debbie has lived and worked in Japan for more than 30 years, where she founded Japan Market Resource Network (JMRN) in 1989, which merged with Carter Associates in 2012 to form CarterJMRN (https://www.carterjmrn.com).

Debbie translates consumer research into clear strategic direction for global clients across a wide range of categories (including Age-Tech). She served as President and Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) from 2004–2007, and as President Emeritus (2008–present). Debbie is also a former caregiver on a mission to change the way the world looks at caregiving so the impacts are not so devastating. Her work focuses on providing companies with support programs for working caregivers to mitigate the related risks of absentee-ism, employee turnover, and extra healthcare costs. With the launch of Aging Matters International (AMI) and TheCaregivingJourney.com in 2016, Debbie brought her market research acumen to the world of caregiving. Her first book, The Caregiving Journey: Information. Guidance. Inspiration. (Flower of Life Press, 2018), supports individuals in going beyond logistics in managing their caregiving situations with ease and grace (www.TheCaregivingJourney.com).

Her second book, The Caregiving Crisis: What It Costs Your Business and How to Fix It, is available from late February 2022, and helps companies with practical ways to support their employee caregivers.

www.TheCaregivingCrisis.com

Panel Presentation (2022) | Missing You: Resilience, Renewal and Rebuilding Intergenerational Contact Within Families
Kathryn M. Lavender
National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA)

Biography

Kathryn joined the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) team in November 2017 as project manager. She is involved with day to day operations including data deposits, restricted-use data agreements, data user requests, as well as long-term planning of NACDA activities in the research community.

Before transitioning to NACDA, Kathryn Lavender came to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) from the University of Michigan-Dearborn as a co-op student, and accepted a full-time position after graduating with her degree in economics. She has been involved in many areas of ICPSR, from curating data across different projects and supervising curation staff to event planning with the summer internship program. As of this April, Kathryn has been an official ICPSR staff member for 10 years.

Panel Presentation (2022) | NACDA: Data on Aging Resources from Research Ideation to Long-Term Preservation and Sharing

Previous Presentations

Workshop Presentation (2021) | Creating Our New Normal: Responding, Adapting and Thriving in a Post-COVID 19 World
Workshop Presentation (2021) | Aging Data: NACDA & an Open-source Repository
Keynote Workshop Presentation (2020) | Aging Data: NACDA & an Open-source Repository
Featured Workshop Presentation (2019) | Locating Data for Research: Data Collections and Resources for Thesis Writing, Teaching, and Grant Development for the Social Sciences and the Environment
Featured Workshop Presentation (2018) | Locating Data for Research

This presentation is co-sponsored by IAFOR and The University of Michigan

Hee Rin Lee
Michigan State University, United States

Biography

Dr Hee Rin Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Media & Information at Michigan State University, United States working in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Lee's work addresses problems beyond the efficiency and functionality that are often prioritised in the advancement of robotics. Lee designs and evaluates robots for social good with the aim of empowering socially marginalised groups, including people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, racial minorities, and older adults. This work will strengthen the autonomy of marginalised people in society to bring about positive social change. As an expert in community-based participatory design within the field of robotics, Dr Lee adopted community health approaches to explore health issues as a holistic experience that requires environmental support within the broader community. Throughout her research career, she has built long-term relationships with community centres and co-designed robots with individuals with various health issues (e.g., depression, dementia). Lee's research has yielded Best Paper nominations at premier Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) conferences including HRI, UbiComp, CSCW, and CHI. Lee has served on technical program committees for ACM/IEEE HRI, and the ACM Participatory Design Conference.

Panel Presentation (2022) | Helping Hands: Robotic Assistance in Supporting and Maintaining Social Interactions with Elders
James W. McNally
University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging

Biography

Dr James W. McNally is the Director of the NACDA Program on Aging, a data archive containing over 1,500 studies related to health and the aging lifecourse. He currently does methodological research on the improvement and enhancement of secondary research data and has been cited as an expert authority on data imputation. Dr McNally has directed the NACDA Program on Aging since 1998 and has seen the archive significantly increase its holdings with a growing collection of seminal studies on the aging lifecourse, health, retirement and international aspects of aging. He has spent much of his career addressing methodological issues with a specific focus on specialized application of incomplete or deficient data and the enhancement of secondary data for research applications. Dr McNally has also worked extensively on issues related to international aging and changing perspectives on the role of family support in the later stages of the aging lifecourse.

Panel Presentation (2022) | NACDA: Data on Aging Resources from Research Ideation to Long-Term Preservation and Sharing
Panel Presentation (2022) | Helping Hands: Robotic Assistance in Supporting and Maintaining Social Interactions with Elders
Panel Presentation (2022) | Missing You: Resilience, Renewal and Rebuilding Intergenerational Contact Within Families

Previous Presentations

Workshop Presentation (2021) | Creating Our New Normal: Responding, Adapting and Thriving in a Post-COVID 19 World
Workshop Presentation (2021) | Aging Data: NACDA & an Open-source Repository
Keynote Workshop Presentation (2020) | Aging Data: NACDA & an Open-source Repository
Featured Presentation (2019) | Defining and Measuring Resilience in an Aging World
Featured Workshop Presentation (2019) | Locating Data for Research: Data Collections and Resources for Thesis Writing, Teaching, and Grant Development for the Social Sciences and the Environment
Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Health Across the Lifecourse
Featured Workshop Presentation (2018) | Locating Data for Research
Featured Presentation (2017) | Methodologies for the Collection of Comparative Community Level Public Health Data: Obtaining Powerful and Statistically Meaningful Findings for Small Populations
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Easts Meets West – Healthy, Active and Beautiful Aging in Asia
Lowell Sheppard
Never Too Late Academy, Japan

Biography

Lowell Sheppard is an author, speaker, social entrepreneur, former minister, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, husband, father, long-distance cyclist, and aspiring sailor. Lowell has spent his entire adult life working with established non-government organisations (also known as non-profit societies) and in several NGO start-ups. As Founder of HOPE International Development Agency Japan, Lowell has seen the growth of HOPE-JP to be in the top 2% of charitable organisations in Japan with the coveted “nintei” certified tax-deductible status.

Lowell has served for the last twenty years as an informal advisor to companies and boards in the area of ethical decision making and thought leadership with a focus on community legacy. He has dedicated much of his life to social and environmental improvement projects.

As an author, his book Never Too Late (Lion Hudson PLC, 2005) was published in four languages and was the catalyst for his latest social enterprise called the Never Too Late Academy of which the flagship course is called “Daring To Realize Your Dream”.

Lowell moved onto a sailboat two years ago in Tokyo and is currently sailing full time around Japan, training for his solo crossing of the Pacific before the age of 70. His voyage is being documented by the History Channel and the pilot will be aired in 2022.

Panel Presentation (2022) | Missing You: Resilience, Renewal and Rebuilding Intergenerational Contact Within Families
Ryuji Yamazaki-Skov
Osaka University, Japan

Biography

Ryuji Yamazaki-Skov (Yamazaki), PhD is a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at the Symbiotic Intelligent Systems Research Center, Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives, Osaka University, Japan. He received a MA degree in Philosophy from Chuo University and a PhD in Knowledge Science from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) in 2004 and 2010 respectively. He has worked as a Researcher at JAIST, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Japan, as an Invited Researcher, a member of the PENSOR project (Philosophical Enquiries into Social Robotics) at Aarhus University, Denmark, and as an Assistant Professor at School of Social Sciences, Waseda University, Japan. His research interest is in new media studies with a focus on social robotics, clinical philosophy & ethics, and robo-philosophy, including the research topics of human-robot interaction, phenomenology of embodiment, care for older adults, dementia care, cross-cultural ethnography, and inter-generational relationships & altruism. Currently, his main research activities are part of the MEXT Society 5.0 Realization Research Support Project at Osaka University:

Panel Presentation (2022) | Helping Hands: Robotic Assistance in Supporting and Maintaining Social Interactions with Elders
Keith W. Miller
University of Missouri – St. Louis, United States

Biography

Keith W. Miller is the Orthwein Endowed Professor for Lifelong Learning in the Sciences at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, USA. In that position, he is partnering with the St. Louis Science Center. Dr Miller’s research interests are in computer ethics, online learning, and software testing. He is a past editor-in-chief of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. He was awarded the 2011 Joseph Weizenbaum Award by the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology, and is currently the President of that Society. He has been a principal investigator of grants from the US National Science Foundation to study the effects of ethics education for computer science students, and to encourage scientists to become teachers.

Panel Presentation (2022) | Helping Hands: Robotic Assistance in Supporting and Maintaining Social Interactions with Elders
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