Yoichi Ochiai was born in 1987 and received his PhD in applied computer science at the University of Tokyo within two years, Tokyo University's fastest PhD record to date.  He is an advisor to the president, assistant professor, and research head of the Digital Nature Group at Tsukuba University, as well as a visiting professor at the Osaka University of Arts, visiting professor at Digital Hollywood University, and CEO of Pixie Dust Technologies Inc. Ochiai was given the World Technology Award in 2015, Prix Ars Electronica in 2016, the EU STARTS Prize,  St. Gallen Symposium Leader of Tomorrow and Best Knowledge Pool, Global Shapers by World Economic Forum, and other various international awards. His work has been featured in publications such as Nature Index Japan 2017 and Axis Magazine, and he has appeared on various media networks including CNN, BBC, Discovery, CNBC, and Reuters. Ochiai is the author of "Century of Enchantment (PLANETS)" and "Message to the Futurists of Tomorrow" (Shogakukan).

Michiko Ogawa was born and raised in Itachibori, Nishi Ward, Osaka City and majored in bioelectronic engineering at Keio University's Department of Science and Technology.  She joined Panasonic (formally known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.) after her graduation in 1986. Ogawa is an executive officer at Panasonic, director of the technics brand project and promotion office, vice president and head of technology of Panasonic's Appliances Company, and director of the engineering division. Her deep fascination with music sparked her interest in biorhythm, which she studied in collaboration with medical faculty. 

At Panasonic's Acoustic Research Institute, Ogawa worked on research and development of the physiology of acoustic equipment for 15 years. After this,  she  worked at Panasonic's e-net corporate headquarters and eventually joined the audio division in May of 2014. Here she commanded the whole process of technics revival as a high-end audio brand;  Ogawa became director in 2015. In addition to her career achievements, Ogawa is a key figure in Japan's classical jazz scene. She began studying classical piano at the age of three and learned jazz by listening to her father's records. At university she formed a jazz band, and in 1993 she resumed performing as a solo jazz pianist. She has played at highly prestigious events, most recently with the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra in Osaka. Ogawa has released a total of 14 CDs. She also authored the book, The Memory of Sound: Connecting Technology and Mind (Publisher: Bungeishunju).

Takao Someya received his PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1997. Since 2009, he has been a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems at theThe University of Tokyo. From 2001 to 2003, he worked at the Nanocenter (NSEC) of Columbia University and Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies as a visiting scholar. He has been the Globalfoundries Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore since 2016 and the Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Technical University of Munich since 2017. His current research interests include stretchable electronics, organic electronics, and wearable electronics. Someya’s “large-area sensor array” electronic thin film was featured in the November 21, 2005 issue of Time Magazine as one of its “Best Inventions of 2005.”

Joichi “Joi” Ito is an activist, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist focusing on the ethics and governance of technology, tackling complex problems like climate change and redesigning the systems that support scholarship and science. As director of the MIT Media Lab and a professor of the practice in media arts and sciences, he supports researchers at the Lab in deploying design, science, and technology (such as AI, blockchain, and synthetic biology) to transform society in substantial and positive ways.

Soon after arriving at MIT in 2011, Ito introduced mindfulness meditation training to the Media Lab. Together with The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, Ito teaches Principles of Awareness, a class devoted to explaining the contribution that awareness and focus can bring to the creative process.

Ito is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences's 2017 class and a visiting professor of law from practice at the Harvard Law School, where he and Professor Jonathan Zittrain teach The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence.

Ito is chairman of the board of PureTech Health and previously served as board chair and chief executive of Creative Commons. He sits on the boards of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The New York Times Company. In Japan, he was a founder of Digital Garage and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider.

Ito was also an early investor in numerous companies, including Flickr, Last fm, littleBits, Optimus Ride, FormLabs, Kickstarter, and Twitter.

In 2011, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute. He received an honorary doctor of letters from The New School (New York City) in 2013 and an honorary doctor of humane letters from Tufts University two years later. In 2017, he received the IRI Medal.

He earned a PhD from Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance in 2018 for his thesis, The Practice of Change, which is being turned into a book. He serves as a distinguished researcher at the Keio Research Institute at SFC's Internet and Society Laboratory.

Ito is co-author with Jeff Howe of Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future (Grand Central Publishing, December 2016), and he writes a monthly column for WIRED Magazine.

Hiroshi Ishii is the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. He was named associate director of the Media Lab in May 2008. He is also director of the Tangible Media Group, which pursues new visions of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits” and "Radical Atoms.”

Ishii and his team have presented their vision of "Tangible Bits" and "Radical Atoms" at a variety of academic, industrial design, and artistic venues (including ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, Cannes Lions Festival, Aspen Ideas Festival, Industrial Design Society of America, AIGA, Ars Electronica, Centre Pompidou, and Victoria and Albert Museum), emphasizing that the development of vision requires the rigors of both scientific and artistic review.  A display of many of the group's projects took place at the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo during the summer of 2000. The following year, a three-year-long exhibition titled "Get in Touch" featured the Tangible Media Group's work at Ars Electronica Center (Linz, Austria) from September 2001 through August 2004. Ishii was elected to the CHI Academy by ACM SIGCHI in 2006.

Prior to joining the MIT Media Lab from 1988-1994, Ishii led a CSCW research group at NTT Human Interface Laboratories Japan, where his team invented TeamWorkStation and ClearBoard. Ishii was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada from 1993-1994. He has also received several degrees in engineering, including a BE degree in electronic engineering, and ME and PhD degrees in computer engineering from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1978, 1980, and 1992, respectively.

Fadel Adib is an Assistant Professor at MIT and the founding director of the Signal Kinetics research group at the MIT Media Lab. His group explores and develops new technologies and algorithms for wireless sensing and communication, with a focus on autonomous systems and digital health. Before joining MIT as a faculty, Fadel received his Master’s and PhD from MIT, and his bachelor's degree from the American University of Beirut.

Fadel's research has been identified as one of the 50 ways MIT has transformed Computer Science over the past 50 years. His work has been featured in major media outlets including BBC, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He was named to the Forbes’ list of 30 under 30 and MIT Technology Review’s list of the world's top 35 innovators under 35. His theses won the Sprowls Award for best PhD dissertation in Computer Science at MIT, the ACM SIGMOBILE Doctoral Dissertation Award, and the William A Martin Memorial award for best Master’s thesis in Computer Science at MIT. He is also the recipient of the Google Faculty Research Award, the Sony Career Development Chair, the AUB Distinguished Young Alumnus Award, the CHI 2015 Honorable Mention Award, and the MobiCom 2014 Best Demo Award.

Fadel was invited to demo his research in numerous venues including the White House and the UK House of Lords. Currently, his research is being commercialized by a startup called Emerald, and it is being used in clinical studies at major US hospitals, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Boston Medical Center.

Canan Dagdeviren joined the faculty in January 2017 to direct the new Conformable Decoders research group at the MIT Media Lab. The group will create mechanically adaptive electromechanical systems that can intimately integrate with the target object for sensing, actuation, and energy harvesting, among other applications. Dagdeviren believes that vital information from nature and the human body is "coded" in various forms of physical patterns. Her research focuses on the creation of conformable decoders that can "decode" these patterns into beneficial signals and/or energy.

Dagdeviren created a wide range of piezoelectric systems that can be twisted, folded, stretched/flexed, wrapped, and implanted onto curvilinear surfaces of the human body, without damage or significant alteration in device performance. She received her PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a focus on exploring patterning techniques and creating piezoelectric biomedical systems. Her collective PhD research involved flexible mechanical energy harvesters, multi-functional cardiac vessel stents, wearable blood pressure sensors, and stretchable skin modulus sensing bio-patches. As a junior  fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University, she conducted her postdoctoral research at the MIT David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research to design and fabricate multi-functional, minimally invasive brain injectrodes that can simultaneously deliver drugs on demand and electrically modulate neural activity precisely and selectively for the treatment of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Dagdeviren’s work has been recognized by various, prestigious media outlets, such as Smithsonian, MIT Technology Review, Popular Mechanics, CBS News, LA Times, BBC News, New Scientist, Medical Daily, IEEE Spectrum, Physics World, Nature Materials, C&ENews, Forbes, and Qmed/Medical Product Manufacturing News. In 2015, Dagdeviren was named to the "Top 35 Innovators Under 35" (inventor category) by MIT Technology Review, and to the "Top 30 Under 30 in Science" by Forbes.  Dagdeviren was also named as the 2017 Innovation and Technology Delegate of the American Academy of Achievement.

Mirei Rioux has been serving as an Industry-University collaboration coordinator since 2008. She is currently serving as the Assistant Director of Member Relations, Asia-Pacific and is in charge of a series of Tokyo Event since 2010.