JIFT has a Steering Committee consisting of eight members, four from each country. Two of these members are the Japanese and US co-chairmen. Two other members of the Steering Committee, the US and Japanese co-executive secretaries, are responsible for the ongoing daily oversight of the progress of JIFT activities. The co-chairman and co-executive secretary on the US side are, respectively, the director and assistant director of the Institute for Fusion Studies (IFS) of The University of Texas at Austin. The Japanese co-chairman has been the director of the Theory and Computer Simulation Center at the National Institute for Fusion Studies. Furthermore, on the Japanese side there is one official Advisor, who is from the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute; and on the US side there is an Advisory Committee comprised of several members representing a spectrum of US universities and national laboratories. The names of the persons on the Steering Committee and the names of the Advisors are listed below:

A number of changes in the composition of the JIFT Steering Committee occurred during the past year. In January Dr. R. Hazeltine stepped down as director of the IFS and also as the US-co-chairman; he was replaced in both positions by Dr. J. Van Dam, currently the IFS interim director. Dr. F. Waelbroeck, now the IFS assistant director, became the new US co-executive secretary for JIFT. On the Japanese side, Dr. T. Sato will leave his current position in the new Japanese fiscal year that begins April 1, 2002, and it is anticipated that Dr. M. Okamoto, who had been the Japanese co-executive secretary, will replace him as the new Japanese co-chairman. Also, Dr. W. Sadowski retired from the US Department of Energy in January and was replaced on the JIFT Steering Committee by Dr. M. Crisp (DOE). The important contributions of Dr. Hazeltine, Dr. Sato, and Dr. Sadowski have been highly appreciated. Finally, Dr. J. Dawson, a member of the JIFT Steering Committee for over twenty years, passed away in November 2001; he had played a very key role in the initial establishment of the JIFT program, and his participation and wisdom over the years were invaluable. (To celebrate his scientific accomplishments and role in US-Japan fusion theory collaborations, a two-day JIFT workshop on plasma simulations is being planned for May 2002 at UCLA, in conjunction with a one-day Symposium hosted by UCLA.)

The JIFT Steering Committee attempts to schedule workshops in such a way as to dovetail with other meetings. It also tries to involve participation at workshops by interested experimentalists and to invite relevant available scientists from other countries to attend workshops.

As the principal program for fundamental theoretical exchanges in the US-Japan Fusion Research Collaboration, JIFT operates alongside the Fusion Physics Planning Committee (FPPC) and the Fusion Technology Planning Committee (FTPC). In particular, the JIFT activities are coordinated with the four FPPC areas of activity, viz., core plasma phenomena, edge behavior and control, heating and current drive, and new approaches and diagnostics.