Rika Takahashi

Starting on 16 April, Rika Takahashi will join KEK's Linear Collider Project Office to serve as the dedicated Asian communicator for the ILC. She is taking over for Youhei Morita, who has served as the ILC communicator for Asia since August 2005. Takahashi will closely collaborate with the other ILC communicators, Elizabeth Clements (Americas), Perrine Royole-Degieux (Europe), and Barbara Warmbein (Europe).

As an ILC communicator, she will edit and write stories for ILC NewsLine, the new quarterly print publication ILC NewsLine Q and take care of the general ILC communications business internationally and domestically.

For the past six years, Takahashi has been working for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) as a communications officer and worked for the International Space Station and NASA's various Space Shuttle missions with Japanese astronauts. Before JAXA, she had worked in the United States as a legal assistant for immigration and as a pastry manager.

One of her major assignments in JAXA was to promote the shuttle mission in Japan in July 2005, when the Japanese mission specialist, Soichi Noguchi, was launched. She proposed the idea to have a short video clip in JR Yamanote-Line in Tokyo, where millions of Japanese business persons are massively and tightly clamped in commuter trains every morning and evening. The video was to introduce the training scenes of Noguchi, and viewing Earth from space also helped commuters relax during the busy rush hours. She also handled numerous kinds of Japanese VIP visits at the Kennedy Space Center.

“I've been dedicated to the Japanese space programmes so deeply, so I will miss my JAXA colleagues a lot,” said Takahashi. “But on the other hand, I think that the ILC will be a great and challenging programme, and I feel a lot of excitement in this community. I really look forward to working with physicists and engineers all over the world.”

-- Youhei Morita

The “Fab Four” pose as characters from the TV series “Charlie's Angels.” From left: Elizabeth Clements, Barbara Warmbein, Perrine Royole-Degieux and Youhei Morita, nicknamed Charlie.