Mansfield Fellows and Alumni Celebrate 2017
December 21, 2017
Current and alumni Mansfield Fellows reconnected with each other and with the Mansfield Foundation network at year-end parties in Washington and Tokyo this month. Alumni from the second to the twenty-first group of Mansfield Fellows gathered for a bonenkai with the Foundation’s Corporate Friends and Visiting Fellows in Washington December 6. Current Mansfield Fellows caught up with alumni Fellows and Foundation partners in Tokyo on December 14. This was the Foundation’s second bonenkai in Washington and first in Tokyo. The Fellowship network now includes 140 alumni Fellows, ten current Fellows working in Japan, and a twenty-third group of Fellows that will be announced in the weeks ahead.
Earlier this month, alumni Fellow Kenneth Cavanaugh, Associate Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Division of Cardiovascular Devices, attended the U.S.-Japan Harmonization by Doing Think Tank in Tokyo. The goal of this conference was to strengthen ongoing collaborations between U.S. and Japanese physicians, government officials, and industry members to promote the development and availability of novel medical devices in both countries. During the meeting, Dr. Cavanaugh presented an overview of FDA’s initiatives to promote early-stage clinical research in the United States and how these efforts can synergize with similar activities in Japan. Also during his visit to Japan, Dr. Cavanaugh participated in a meeting of the International Medical Device Regulators Forum to promote and standardize the global use of patient registries in regulatory decision-making, and met with individuals from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW) and the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) to discuss specific U.S.-Japanese medical device-related regulatory initiatives. Dr. Cavanaugh was a Mansfield Fellow from 2016-2017, and his placements included MHLW, PMDA, the Japan Agency for Medical Evaluation and Development (AMED), and private industry.
