Who he is?

He graduated from Mechanical Engineering of Kyoto University in 1978,
and completed the Aerospace Engineering, Post Graduate School of Tokyo
University in 1983, when he received the Doctor of Engineering from it.
He was at Assistant Professor, the Institute of Space and Astronautical
Science (ISAS) until 1988 since then, when he joined the institute.
He got the Full Professor position at ISAS in 2000.
He participated in a variety of projects including Japan’s first planetary
probes to comet Halley, Lunar Orbiter missions Hiten and GEOTAIL, Nozomi,
a Mars mission, and Hayabusa, a world’s first sample and return mission
from a solar body outsideEarth gravity sphere.
He had been the Project Manager of the Hayabusa mission since 1996 till 2011,
during while the mission successfully touched down to the surface of
a near Earth asteroid Itokawa and returned the sample back to Australia
in 2010 for the first time.
He is currently at the official advisor position for the Hayabusa-2 mission.
He is also the founder of Ikaros, a world’s first Solar Sail demonstrator
project launched in 2010.
He was at Senior Fellow position, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
(JAXA). Along with the JAXA agency activities, he has been a Professor
in Aerospace Engineering course at the University of Tokyo and has been engaged
in the education for post graduate students for more than 20 years by now.
During while almost 100 students finished the master course and more than 20
students acquired the Ph.D degrees.
He was the president of Japan Society for Space and Astronautical Science.
And he also served Secretary General at the Strategic Headquarters for Space
Policy's, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of Japan.
He had been a Full Member and has been a corresponding member at the Science
Council of Japan, Government of Japan.
He has been a Fellow at the Japan Society for Space and Astronautical Science.
He has been a Full Member, Board of Trustee at the International Academy
of Astronautics.
After he retired from JAXA in March, 2021, he had served for Tohoku University
as a Professor at the Aerospace Engineering. He moved to Australian National
University (ANU) in February, 2022. Since then, he has been a Professor,
School of Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Cybernetics.