Dr. Yoshinobu Baba received Ph.D. degree in 1986 from Kyushu University. He is now a director general of Institute for Quantum Life Science, National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology(QST). He is also a designated professor of Institutes of Innovation for Future Society, Nagoya University, and a research supervisor, JST CREST Extracellular Fine Particles Project. He has been admitted as a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and received over 90 awards, prizes, and Medal for his contributions in nanobioscience and quantum life science, including the Medal with Purple Ribbon, the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Science, and Technology, and the Chemical Society of Japan Award. Dr.
Baba's research studies are directed to the development of nanobiodevices and quantum life science for omics, systems biology, medical diagnosis, tissue engineering, and molecular imaging. Dr. Rikinari Hanayama received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Osaka University in 2004 for his research on phagocytosis of apoptotic cells. He was a HFSP fellow at Harvard Medical School and an assistant professor at Kyoto University before starting his own laboratory as an associate professor at WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center (IFReC) at Osaka University in 2011, where he began research on extracellular vesicles.
In 2015, he moved to Kanazawa University, where he is a professor at the School of Medicine and WPI Nano Life Science Institute (NanoLSI). His research aims to elucidate the functions of extracellular vesicles in immunity, cancer progression, and neurodegeneration, and to develop new drugs using extracellular vesicles. Dr. Hidetaka Akita received Ph.D. degree in 2002 from the University of Tokyo. He is a professor of Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tohoku University. He has received many awards regarding drug delivery systems.
His research interests are focused on drug delivery systems, immune engineering, and DNA/RNA vaccine. Dr. Takao Yasui received Ph.D. degree in 2011 from Nagoya University. He is an associate professor at Department of Biomolecular Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering at Nagoya University, a PRESTO researcher at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and a co-founder and a Nanodevice Director at Craif Inc. He has received over 37 awards for his contributions in the field of oxide nanowire microfluidics. His research interests are focused on designing, fabricating, and characterizing oxide nanowire microfluidics for applications in healthcare, diagnosis, sensing biomolecules, and engineering biology.