Yoshihiro Ito
Affiliated Society: Japanese Society for Biomaterials
Country of Residence: Japan
Current Position: Chief Scientist and Director
Biography:
Yoshihiro Ito was born in Gifu, Japan, in 1959. He received his Bachelor’s (1981) and Master’s (1983) degrees in polymer chemistry at Kyoto University and was awarded a doctorate in engineering from the same university in 1987. Since then he has held a number of posts at various institutions including Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1987), assistant (1988) and associate (1996) professor at Kyoto University, research fellow at the University of California, Irvine (1992-1993), professor of the University of Tokushima (1999), and Project Leader at the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology (2002).
Now, he is Chief Scientist and Director of the Nano Medical Engineering Laboratory at the RIKEN Institute (from 2004) and a team leader of Emergent Bioengineering Materials Laboratory, RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (from 2013). He is also a visiting professor of Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Hokkaido University, Waseda University, and Nagoya University, and a guest professor of Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Areas of research interest:
His research focuses on biomaterial science, regenerative medical engineering, combinatorial bioengineering for the creation of functional polymers, and soft nanotechnology.
Research keywords:
Protein and Cells at Interfaces