Award for Asian Young Professional on Water Research was established in the year 2009 by Prof. Ohgaki Shinichiro and his colleagues in the University of Tokyo who initiated a series of International Symposia on Southeast Asian Water Environment.

Sponsored by Ohgaki Scholarship fund, the Award is given every year to distinguished young professionals (less than 40 years old) who demonstrated the most outstanding and promising performance in the symposium.

With respect to medal design, we followed Prof. Ohgaki's proposal to bring traditional Japanese touch into it. He was inspired by a pair of famous screen painting that is Japan's national treasure, "Red and White Plum Blossoms" (紅白梅図屏風). This is a masterpiece by Korin OGATA (尾形光琳), a Japanese painter and lacquerer who did great works in the 18th century, and the design of this medal came from the motif of "flow of water" in this painting.