Masahito Sugita is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2009-10. He started his career as a systems engineer of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Tokyo, Japan in 1987, and has been involved in development of various IT systems for enterprises, such as automobile manufacturers, dealers and transportation companies. His latest position at his company is as a manager in Strategic IT Business Planning Department and he is in charge of research for new IT businesses. He graduated from the University of Tokyo with a BE in Precision Machinery Engineering.

Daiju Nakahashi is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC 
for 2009-2010. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he has worked at Sumitomo 
Corporation, one of the major trading and investment conglomerates in Japan for 
fifteen years. He has been engaged in sales and marketing of IT-related products 
and services as well as venture investments and new business developments in the 
IT industry. In addition, he has experience to manage one of the affiliated companies 
of Sumitomo Corporation as an executive vice president. He graduated from Keio 
University with a degree in Commerce and Business."

Masatsugu Mitsuyama is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2009-10. 
Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, he has worked in the CATV Department in Sumitomo Corporation for 6 years. His main responsibility was supporting the management of one of the  affiliated companies, Jupiter Telecommunications, Inc., which is the largest CATV company in Japan. At Jupiter Telecommunications, Inc., Mitsuyama was the manager of Corporate Planning Department and was in charge of M&A, planning corporate strategy, investing, etc. He graduated from Keio University with a major in Business and Commerce.

Wataru Ishii is a Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellow at Shorenstein APARC for 2009–10 and 2010–11. He is chief staff of the International Relations Division of Shizuoka Prefecture Government (SPG) in Japan where he has worked for the past 20 years. Before joining Shorenstein APARC, he worked in several departments of SPG, including taxation, tourism promotion, and public relations. He graduated from Kanazawa University with a BA in liberal arts.

Kiminori Gemba is a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC and joins the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship, a project within the Stanford Program of Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 

His research interest lies in analyzing the innovation strategy of an "open innovation", with the main object of his research being to determine the source of the competitiveness of open innovations.

He received his Master's degree in Engineering from the University of Tokyo, after which he joined the Sanwa  Research Institute as a researcher.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, where his doctoral thesis was entitled "The Dynamics of Diversification on Japanese Industries".  After receiving this degree, he worked as both a research associate an an associate professor at the University of Tokyo.  He is currently a professor at Ritsumeikan University's Graduate School of Technology Management.

Dr. Brian Chen is currently a visiting scholar with the Asia Health Policy Program and Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He was recently Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center's 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellow in Comparative Health Policy. As a visiting scholar, Dr. Chen will conduct collaborative research about health of the elderly and chronic disease in China.

As an applied economist, Chen’s research focuses on the impact of incentives in health care organizations on provider and patient behavior. For his dissertation, Chen empirically examined how vertical integration and prohibition against self-referrals affected physician prescribing behavior. His job market paper was selected for presentation at the American Law and Economics Association’s Annual Meeting, the Academy of Management, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the First Annual Conference on Empirical Health Law and Policy at Georgetown Law Center in 2009.  The paper was also nominated for best paper based on a dissertation at the Academy of Management.

Chen comes to the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center not only with a multidisciplinary law and economics background, but also with an international perspective from having lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and France. He has a particularly intimate knowledge of the Taiwanese health care system from his experience as an assistant to the hospital administrator at a medical college in Taiwan.

During his past residence as a postdoctoral fellow with the Asia Health Policy Program, Chen conducted empirical research on cost containment policies in Taiwan and Japan and how those policies impacted provider behavior. His work also contributed to the program’s research activities on comparative health systems and health service delivery in the Asia-Pacific, a theme that encompasses the historical evolution of health policies; the role of the private sector and public-private partnerships; payment incentives and their impact on patients and providers; organizational innovation, contracting, and soft budget constraints; and chronic disease management and service coordination for aging populations.

Dr. Brian Chen recently completed his Ph.D. in Business Administration in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1992.

After two years of research at the University of Tokyo, Dr. Matt Augustine recently received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. Augustine also received a M.A. in History from Columbia and received a B.A. from the Politics Department at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of modern Japan and Korea.

Augustine’s research focuses on international and comparative history of military occupations, especially U.S. occupations in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa; Japan’s colonial empire in the Asia-Pacific; and the history of race, migration, and border controls.

He recently published an article that explores the interaction between the cross-border smuggling and reversion movement with Japan as acts of resistance by Okinawans against U.S. military rule in the Ryukyu Islands after World War II. Augustine’s dissertation, “Crossing from Empire to Nation: Repatriation, Illegal Immigration, and the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952,” examines the relationship between migration and border controls, as well as the redefinition of nationality and ethnicity in post-imperial Japan.

While at Shorenstein APARC, Augustine will research and write on the history of war reparations that continue to affect relations between Japan and its neighbors in Northeast Asia. He will also teach a course that covers such issues as war, empire, postcolonialism, and U.S. military occupations in the region.