= A Serial Introduction Part 2 =Winners of ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards 2023
In May every year, The ITU Association of Japan (ITU-AJ) proudly presents ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards to people who have madeoutstanding contributions in the field of international standardization and have helped in the ongoing development of ICT.
These Awards are also an embodiment of our sincere desire to encourage further contributions from these individuals in the future.
If you happen to run into these winners at another meeting in the future, please say hello to them.
But first, as part of the introductory series of Award Winners, allow us to introduce some of those remarkable winners.

Akihiro Shoji

Fields of activity: IT human resource development

Developing globally qualified IT human resources in Bangladesh
I am very honored to receive an ITU-AJ Encouragement
Award and am very thankful to the association and everyone who
has provided guidance and support.
I have been working in Bangladesh, in South Asia since 2008,
for Information Technology (IT) human resource development.
In order to establish a standard for human resource developmentin the country, I have been involved in advocating and supportingintroduction of a national IT examination from Japan, theInformation Technology Engineer Examination (ITEE) in 2013,and in supporting its subsequent dissemination and utilization.
Bangladesh was part of India until 1947 and initially became
independent as East Pakistan. Later, an independent country
emerged as Bangladesh in 1971. The country has yet achieved
recognition and neither the IT human resources nor the IT
industry can claim to be able to compete fairly in the global
market. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has
been supporting development of its capabilities and promoting

12New Breeze Winter 2024Bangladesh internationally, including its IT human resources
and IT industry. As a member of JICA, I have been particularly
focusing on human resource development.
From September 2023, I will be involved in a new JICA
project that is starting in Bangladesh, providing technical support
to mid-level and above engineers in the Bangladesh IT industry,helping the country's IT companies advance from small andmedium-sized companies to global companies that can compete
on a par with the global market.
The global market is f iercely competitive, but I willcontinue to support the country to act effectively in the worldand systematically develop its human resources based on thetechnology and knowledge that Japan has already acquired. I hopethat awareness of the keywords "Bangladesh IT human resources
and IT industry" will increase, and I look forward to working on
further Japan-Bangladesh collaboration initiatives in the future.

Yuji Suzuki

NTT DOCOMO, INC.
https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/
Fields of activity: 3GPP TSG SA WG6Standardisation to accelerate application enablement
It is a great honour to receive the ITU-AJ Encouragement
Award. I am grateful to ITU-AJ and all who have supported mywork, especially 3GPP SA6 delegates and my colleagues at NTT
DOCOMO.
I joined 3GPP SA6 in October 2020. SA6 has been
responsible for specifying solutions for mission criticalcommunications since its inception in 2014. During Release 15, it
expanded its scope to specify application frameworks and enablers
such as CAPIF (Common API Framework) and SEAL (ServiceEnabler Architecture Layer), which provide functions available toapplications outside 3GPP.
In SA6, I worked as a rapporteur for SNAAPP (Release18), which aims to enhance the authorisation mechanisms forAPI invocation. There were many issues to discuss in creating aspecification, but thanks to all the support from SA6 delegatesand my colleagues, we successfully completed our SNAAPP workin the SA6#55 meeting, which was held in Berlin, Germany inMay 2023. I hope that this technology will enable end users toSatoshi Yamaguchi

flexibly control permissions for API invocations that might affecttheir service experience or privacy, which will make such API
invocations more secure and convenient.
I also actively contributed to EDGEAPP, which aims tospecify application enablers to support edge computing. In Release
18, we enhanced EDGEAPP features in different aspects,including roaming (where device stays in a different network
operator's service area) and federation (where multiple edge
computing service providers are involved to serve consumers).
SA6 started Release 19 study and work in August 2023. NTTDOCOMO is proposing a new Release 19 work item, SNAAPP_EXT, to provide external application developers with useful
information regarding API development. SA6 has also discussed
many other topics to be handled during Release 19, includingenhancements to EDGEAPP. I am looking forward to seeing
outcomes of our standardisation activities in the market shortly,and I hope that these technologies will contribute to progress inthe telecommunications industry.

Fujitsu Limited
https://www.fujitsu.com/global/
Fields of activity: Next G Alliance

Activities in Next G Alliance for the future 6G Standardization
I am honored to receive this encouragement award fromthe ITU-AJ and grateful to the association and those who haveprovided guidance and support.
Since March 2022, I have attended the meetings of the Next
G Alliance (NGA), which was launched by the Alliance for
Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) in late 2020.
The NGA aims to advance North American wireless technology
leadership over the next decade through private sector-led efforts
in association with government stakeholders. It currently focuses
on developing the 6G Roadmap and various white papers.
In an NGA white paper, we were able to propose a topic thatis being discussed in Japan: “Orchestration in DisaggregatedArchitecture”; and include the content in terms of “end to end”,“openness”, and “management functions”. The white paper isavailable on the NGA website and could be used as a reference forfuture 6G standardization.
I also presented lessons learned through activities in the NGA
at a public seminar in Japan, organized by the Telecommunication
Technology Committee (TTC). We were able to hold a lively
Q&A session at this presentation, and we realized that the NGA
activities attract a lot of interest.
Currently, I continue to attend NGA meetings considering
specific requirements in response to the recommendation,“Framework and overall objectives of the future developmentof IMT for 2030 and beyond”. I will do my best to contributeto 6G standardization through the NGA and other Standards
Development Organizations (SDOs) in Japan.

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