In 1998 IIW Sub-commission XV-E initiated a Prize for international achievement and acclaim in the field of Tubular Structures.  This award took the form of a Keynote Address to the International Symposium on Tubular Structures (ISTS), to be known as the “Kurobane Lecture”.
This was in honour of the prodigious contribution made to tubular structures by Professor Yoshiaki Kurobane of Kumamoto University (and more recently Sojo University), Japan.  He was accordingly invited to give the inaugural presentation at ISTS8 in Singapore, in 1998.  The second Kurobane Lecturer was Professor Jaap Wardenier, of Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, and his address was given at ISTS9 in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2001. The third Kurobane Lecturer was Professor Jeffrey Packer, of the University of Toronto in Canada, and his address was given at ISTS10 in Madrid, Spain in 2003.
The fourth Kurobane Lecturer was Professor Peter Marshall,of MHP Systems Engineering in The USA,and his address was given at ISTS11 in Quebec,Canada in 2006. The fifth Kurobane lecturer is to be decided by the IIW Subcommission XV-E.
“Kurobane Lecture”.

Prof. Yoshiaki Kurobane
Japan