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William D. Phillips was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

Graduated from the University of Tokyo and earned PhD in engineering in 2002. Served as a visiting researcher at Stanford University. Since 2019, a professor at University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering. Specialises in AI, deep learning, and web mining.

Andrew Fire, a Santa Clara County native, trained at UC Berkeley, MIT, and Cambridge. He served at Carnegie Institution (1986–2003) and Johns Hopkins. In 2003, he joined Stanford’s faculty in Pathology and Genetics at the School of Medicine. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2006.

After receiving his MS from Kyoto University in 1972, Akira Yoshino joined Asahi Kasei Corporation, where he invented the lithium-ion battery in the 1980s and completed a practical prototype. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019.

Chieko Asakawa joined IBM Japan in 1985. She was appointed an IBM Fellow in 2009. Since 2014, she serves as a visiting professor at CMU. In 2018, she moved to IBM US. She concurrently serves as chief executive director of Miraikan.

Shunsuke Managi is a director for UN Inclusive Wealth Report, proposing its index as a measure beyond GDP, and co-editor of ‘Encyclopedia of Energy, Natural Resource, and Environmental Economics’.

Juichi Yamagiwa, director-general of RIHN, is a researcher and expert in the study of primatology and human evolution. He served as president of Kyoto University, president of International Primatological Society and president of Science Council of Japan.

Haruko Takeyama received her PhD in engineering in 1992, and is a professor at Waseda University since 2007. She has served as PM for Moonshot goal 5, PO for JST-ASPIRE Bio, and as a member of the Science Council of Japan.

Hiroshi Ishiguro is professor of Department of Systems Innovation at Osaka University, visiting director of Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, project manager of MOONSHOT R&D Project, thematic project producer of EXPO 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, and CEO of AVITA, Inc.