Naohisa Kurita is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06 and 2006-07. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he worked for Shizuoka Prefectural Government in Japan, where he took charge of coordination and international business affairs. His research interests are in competitive strategy, and cluster-based theory for regional economic development. He graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo, where he majored in sociology.

Yasuhiro Kanda is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he held positions at the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) for thirteen years, in their nuclear fuel purchasing and business developing departments. Kanda's experiences at KEPCO included forwarding nuclear-fuel-recycling-system in Japan according to national policy, handling new-business planning, and launching a new business as a manager in a KEPCO subsidiary. His latest position at KEPCO was as manager.

Kanda did his undergraduate study at Kobe University in Kobe, where he majored in business administration.

Takashi Kadomatsu is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he held positions at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), government of Japan, for about eleven years, where he took charge of policymaking. His latest position at METI was as deputy director in the public relations office, Minister's Secretariat. He did his undergraduate study at Keio University, in the faculty of environmental information.

Kyoko Ii is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2004-05 and 2005-06. Since 1999, she has worked for the industrial recruitment and location division of the Kumamoto Prefectural Government in Japan, with a mission to promote foreign direct investment into the country. In this capacity, she has worked with foreign companies who succeeded in establishing operations in Kumamoto. Prior to this position, she worked at the Kumamoto Prefectural Government in international affairs, planning, welfare, and distribution. She received BA and MA degrees in foreign studies from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

Guo-nan (Eric) Chin is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06. He completed his undergraduate study in political science at National Taiwan University. He has served in Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) for the past fourteen years, including positions such as secretary in the Taipei Representative Office in Germany. Chin's last assignment was as chief of the planning unit of MOFA's African Department.

Masaaki Awano is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06. He currently works for the Japan Patent Office (JPO), one of the agencies of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), in the Japanese government. Awano has worked for the JPO as a patent examiner for more than twelve years, handling patent applications in the field of semiconductor devices. In 2000, he also took in charge of international affairs at the office, especially with respect to trilateral cooperation among the European Patent Office (EPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and JPO.

Awano completed his undergraduate study in physics at the University of Tokyo. He received an MS in the graduate school of science of the University of Tokyo, where he concentrated on plasma physics.

Ichiro Aoki is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06 and 2006-07. He is also an official of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in the Japanese government.

Aoki graduated in law from Tokyo University. He subsequently engaged in planning the tax system and the banking system in the MOF. He was involved in planning the pension system in the Ministry of Health and Welfare. He worked at the office of a Finance minister. He joined the task force in the Cabinet Office to promote decentralization. He also worked at the Financial Supervisory Agency as director for supervising financial companies. He participated in policymaking and submitting bills on these themes to the Diet.

Aoki's latest post was as director of the Cabinet Office, in charge of making the draft budget.

Kenjiro Aiba is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2005-06. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he worked at the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) for seventeen years. Aiba's experiences at DBJ included policy-based financing and cash-flow management. He was also assigned for a time at the Ministry of Transport.

Aiba's latest position at the DBJ was senior adviser, planning and research, of Tohoku Branch. He completed undrgraduate studies in public administration and political science at Kyoto University.

A doctoral candidate in environmental engineering, Daniel Rutherford's research interests concern the design and implementation of environmental policy in Japan. His dissertation entails a detailed interdisciplinary case study of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's regulation of diesel pollution under Governor Shintaro Ishihara. Tokyo's local regulations, which catalyzed substantial changes in central policy, structured a new domestic market for clean diesel technologies, and led to substantial improvements in local air quality, serve as one of the premiere examples of dramatic policy change in recent years in Japan.

Dan is currently affiliated with Shorenstein APARC as a Takahashi Predoctoral Fellow. During his graduate career, he has received support as a U.S. EPA STAR Fellow, an IIE-Fulbright Graduate Fellow, a Stanford Graduate Fellow in Science and Engineering, and from the Japan Fund. He received his BA in chemistry from the University of Minnesota-Morris and his MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford.

Stella Quah, (PhD, University of Singapore; M.Sc [sociology], Florida State University) is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. She was a Fulbright Hays scholar from 1969 to 1971. Since 1986 she has spent academic sabbaticals as research associate and visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California Berkeley; the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Department of Sociology at Harvard University; the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University; the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford University; and the National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University.

Professor Quah was elected vice president for research of the International Sociological Association (ISA); chairperson of the ISA Research Council for the session 1994-98; and served as associate editor of International Sociology (1998-2004).

Among her professional activities, Professor Quah serves on two institutional review boards; is member of the Society for Comparative Research; member of the International Advisory Board of the British Journal of Sociology; member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Health Sociology Review, the journal of the health section of the Australian Sociological Association; member of the editorial board of Marriage & Family Review; member of the International Advisory Board of Asian Population Studies; editor of the Sociology in Asia Series; and editor of the Health Systems Section, Encyclopedia of Public Health (Elsevier Inc).

Professor Quah's main areas of research are medical sociology, social policy, and family sociology. The complete list of her publications is at http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/socquahs.