Mansfield Fellows Visit Aichi Prefecture
April 5, 2018
Last month Mansfield Fellow Sarah Watson was in Aichi Prefecture for a brief placement with Toyota Motor Company. Ms. Watson, an Environmental Engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, had the opportunity to meet with staff in each section of the Environmental Division at the company’s headquarters in Toyota City. These meetings provided opportunities for Ms. Watson to learn more about Toyota’s environmental initiatives and its work in the context of issues she has been studying in her other placements, including compliance with international environmental treaties and leadership in areas like climate change. Ms. Watson is show below with a G-Station, an electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle charging station that uses its own Wi-Fi network to alert the user via smartphone when the vehicle is fully charged.
Mansfield Fellow Chip Taylor also spent several days in Aichi Prefecture last month visiting sites in Nagoya related to aerospace manufacturing. Mr. Taylor, a Principal Maintenance Inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration, toured three small, family-owned fabrication companies that make parts for the HII rocket (a satellite launch system), Boeing 777 and 787, and the MRJ (Mitsubishi Regional Jet). He also met with representatives of the Aichi Prefectural government and the Chubu Aerospace Industrial Technology Center to learn more about Nagoya’s aerospace manufacturing industry. Mr. Taylor’s guide for most of his time in Nagoya was retired aerospace engineer and consultant Yuuji Ariizumi. Mr. Taylor later visited Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI) headquarters in Tokyo and returned to Nagoya to visit the MHI Tobishima plant, which produces the HII series rocket and various aircraft parts. Mr. Taylor recently began a new placement in the office of Hideki Niizuma, a member of Japan’s House of Councillors and Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
