Yoshiyuki Sankai

Yoshiyuki Sankai earned a Ph.D. in Engineering from University of Tsukuba in Japan in 1987. He has progressed from being a research fellow at the JSPS to assistant professor, associate professor, and then professor at the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba. Dr. Sankai was also a visiting professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, in the United States. Currently, he is a professor, the Executive Research Director at the Center for Cybernics Research and the Director at Research Center for Future Society Engineering Development, F-MIRAI Center (established by Toyota) for the University of Tsukuba, the President and CEO of CYBERDYNE Inc., and a Program Director of cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP) for the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan. He has pioneered a new academic field, “Cybernics: the fusion and combination of humans, robots and information systems,” best represented by the world’s first Wearable Cyborg HAL. HAL is growing to be the new standard of treatment for many diseases, such as stroke, spinal cord injury, and neuromuscular diseases. As the concept of Cybernics cross-overs multiple academic fields, its founder, Sankai, is also an expert on a variety of topics. To name a few related to this event, his name appears in a journal on cell transplantation, 3D nanofibrous hydrogel, and collagen sponge scaffold.