Researcher's Profile

June 1980	J.D Harvard Law School
May 1984	M.D Mayo Medical School
May 1986	M.P.H Johns Hopkins University
June 1988	Cancer epidemiology, NIH
September 1992	Technology transfer, NIH
September 1998	Professor, The University of Tokyo(UTokyo), RCAST（～March 2019)
June 2019	Emeritus Professor, UTokyo

My research has focused on startups, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, and university-industry technology transfer, and the importance of these factors for the development of biomedical and other scientific discoveries for public benefit. Recent works include an analysis of the importance of science-based startups for innovation along with a comparison of the Japanese and American environments for science-based entrepreneurship (Bridging Islands (Oxford 2007)), and a study of the origins of all the new drugs approved 1998-2007 by the US FDA which shows the importance of new companies for the discovery of innovative pharmaceuticals (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2010). Following a sabbatical in Stanford Medical School (2010-11) to better understand the support systems for science-based entrepreneurship in North America and how Japanese entrepreneurs can link to these systems, the focus of my research has shifted to (1) ways to foster the growth of startups based upon Japanese discoveries, particularly ways to help such startups to grow by developing international ties, and (2) ways to encourage invention in Japanese universities to meet important health needs (invention for health)