Team

In addition to his role as Director of the DWIH Tokyo, Axel Karpenstein is, since 2022, director of the Tokyo office of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Previously, he worked at the DAAD Head Office in Bonn in the Strategy Department, where he led the development of the online data portal HSI-Monitor – Profile Data on University Internationality and conducted studies and analyses on student mobility and innovation analysis, among other things. Axel Karpenstein is a political scientist and economist (MA, MPhil Columbia University) with interests in innovation, knowledge and technology transfer, and university-industry collaboration. He has spent more than 20 years in Japan, including as an exchange student at Minami-Tama High School in Hachioji, as a MEXT and DAAD scholar at Kumamoto University, and as an Associate Professor of Politics and Economics at Saitama University. There, his responsibilities also included directing the overseas internship program of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences and co-leading the university’s internationalization project.

Dr. Markus Heckel is the Deputy Director of the DAAD Tokyo Office and Head of Programs at the DWIH (German Centre for Research and Innovation) Tokyo. He manages the centre’s daily operations, maintains close contact with the Advisory Board members and local Japanese partners, and develops the event concepts for the DWIH.

Markus Heckel holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Duisburg-Essen, where he wrote his thesis on the Bank of Japan and monetary policy. Before joining the DWIH, he was Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), where he led the ‘Sustainability and Resilience’ research group. From 2012 to 2018, he worked at the Faculty of Economics and Business at Goethe University Frankfurt. He has taught at various universities, including Kobe University, Sophia University, Waseda University, the University of Mainz, and the University Halle-Wittenberg.

Tamayo Suzuki is a Program Officer to the German Centre for Research and Innovation Tokyo (DWIH Tokyo) and in charge of logistic management of events and partly accounting. She has been working at the centre since 2009.

Yu Takeuchi is in charge of communication and public relations at the German Centre for Research and Innovation Tokyo (DWIH Tokyo). She is responsible for marketing and outreach including the DWIH newsletter and social media presence.