michimasa fujino fujino michimasa is a japanese engineer and businessman the founding president ceo of honda aircraft company the honda subsidiary responsible for hondas overall airframe business strategy and the further development sales promotion and production of the innovative hondajet since 2009 he has also concurrently served as an operating officer of honda motor co ltdprior to leading the formation of honda aircraft company fujino was a vice president with honda rd americas inc and the large project leader for the hondajet program based in greensboro north carolina in this capacity he led all engineering tasks from design through experimental verification fabrication and flight testing of the hondajetfujino joined honda rd co ltd in japan in 1984 after graduating from the university of tokyo with a degree in aeronautical engineering he spent the first two years of his career in the automobile research division working on the development of a new electrical control steering system fujino was then assigned to a research project in the field of aviationover the past 20 years he has been involved in the design and development of aircraft and has participated in several aircraft projects this included major responsibilities in the design and development of two experimental aircraft the mh01 a singleengine turboprop composite airplane and the mh02 an allcomposite business jet he has also performed research in the fields of configuration design advanced aerodynamics including natural laminar flow and transonic aeroelasticity he has developed theoretical techniques for the aerodynamic and aeroelastic design of the hondajet in addition he has conducted windtunnel and flight tests at research facilities around the worldhe was named large project leader for the hondajet program in 1997 fujino was responsible for the development of the overthewing enginemount configuration the highspeed nlf airfoil the nlf fuselage nose and the allcomposite fuselage structure of the hondajetfujino has received international recognition for his contributions to aeronautical research and design he has been the recipient of several international awards including the international council of the aeronautical sciences zhukovsky award for innovation in aeronautics 2014 the sae international clarence l kelly johnson aerospace vehicle design and development award 2013 the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics aiaa aircraft design award 2012 and aviation week and technologys vision award 2008fujino took on the role of president ceo of honda aircraft company in october 2006 he currently has three children