Chelsae, Reagan and I will be living in Tsukuba, Japan for a year. Tsukuba (http://www.tsukubainfo.jp/) is about 20 miles NW of Tokyo and is known as the Science City. I am going over there to do research at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Under AIST I will be working for the Energy Technology Research Institute (ETRI) in the Turbomachinery group. One research topic will be Active Separation Flow Control by Using a Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Actuator, and the other will be Combustion Characteristics of Hydrogen/Hydrogen-rich Fuel. The first topic will be applied to the air flow over the blades of a wind turbine, and the second one I’m not quite sure yet. Here is the link to AIST http://www.aist.go.jp/index_en.html and here is the link to ETRI http://unit.aist.go.jp/energy/index_e.htm.

This opportunity came from a joint venture with New Mexico and Japan. They wanted to send ten New Mexicans but Seth and I are the only two going. The internship is expenses paid so we wont really be making any money. We all decided that the chance to go to Japan with some things paid for was definitely worth it. AIST will be providing our apartment and here is a link to it http://www.jsthouse.com/ninomiya/index.htm. Its nothing special but it is only for visiting researchers.

Seth and I are flying out on March 27th, and our girls our flying out the end of May. The part of the trip I not looking forward to is the two months without Chels and Reagan, but there is good reasoning and once they are there it won’t matter.

Well that is our life for the next year in a nutshell.