Hideyuki Okano

Hideyuki Okano received his M.D. from Keio University School of Medicine in 1983. He worked as an instructor in Department of Physiology at Keio University School of Medicine (1983-1985) and went on to receive his Ph.D. in medical science in 1988 from the Keio University Graduate School of Medicine for his work in molecular genetic studies of myelin deficient mutant mice. From 1985, he moved to Institute for Protein Research Osaka University and continued this project until 1989. From 1989 to 1991, Hideyuki Okano joined the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in USA as a postdoctoral fellow and was involved in developmental neurobiology of Drosophila. As a staff scientist he next went on to work, as an instructor (1992) at the Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo on a project studying the molecular mechanisms of neural development using both Drosophila and mammalian system. He was appointed as Professor at the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, Tsukuba University in 1994. In 1997, he was appointed as a Professor at the Osaka University Medical School (Graduate School of Medicine) and he started his study of stem cells and regenerative medicine of the central nervous system (CNS). In 2001, he was appointed as professor at Department of Physiology, Keio University School of Medicine and he has been a leader of the 21st century Center of Excellence program "Basic Study and Clinical Application of the Human Stem Cell Biology and Immunology" since 2003. He has been a Dean of Graduate School of Medicine, Keio University from 2007. His research focuses on analyzing the molecular and cellular fundamentals of nervous system, with the final goal of this being the application of these understandings to the regulation of stem cell systems and regeneration of the CNS.