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 the late Professor Yoshiaki Kurobane of Kumamoto University (and more recently Sojo University), Japan. He was accordingly invited to give the inaugural presentation at the ISTS 8 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 the ISTS 9 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 the ISTS 10 in Madrid, Spain in 2003. The fourth Kurobane Lecturer was Professor Peter Marshall, of MHP Systems Engineering in USA, and his address was given at the ISTS 11 in Québec, Canada in 2006. The fifth Kurobane Lecturer was Professor Ram Puthli, of University of Karlsruhe in Germany, and his address was given at the ISTS 12 in Shanghai, China in 2008. The sixth Kurobane Lecturer has been decided by the IIW Subcommission XV-E. Dr. Nick Zettlemoyer, of ExxonMobil Development Company in USA, will be delivering the sixth Kurobane Lecture at the ISTS 13 in Hong Kong, China in 2010.