Prof. Osumi graduated Tokyo Medical and Dental University, was given PhD thesis from the same university, and now is a professor of Tohoku University School of Medicine since 1998. She was one of the 25 Distinguished Professors in Tohoku University from 2008 to 2011, and has become Vice President of Tohoku University as well as Director of Tohoku University Libraries from 2018. Her research background is developmental biology, and she has interest in brain development, evolution, and disease. More recently, she has much interest in gendered research focusing on sex differences in the brain. She was a representative of CREST project (2005-2010) supported by JST, and Global COE project (2007-2012) as well as Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (16H06524) “Integrative Research toward Elucidation of Generation of Brain Systems for Individuality”. Currently, As the Director of Gender Equality Center at Tohoku University, Dr. Osumi is promoting the policy of diversity in academia, providing various information through the website and social media, and organizing various events networking female researchers.

Gojobori (PhD, Kyushu U., Japan) is a Distinguished Professor, King Abdullah U. of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, and Project Professor, Natl. Inst. of Genetics (NIG), Japan. He received Salvatore Gold Medal from Italy, Medal with Purple Ribbon from Japan. He is foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Academician of the Pontifical Academy of Science; member of Academia Europaea. He is Vice-President of CODATA. He is: section editor, BMC Genomics; founding editor, Genome Biology and Evolution; editor, GENE and FEBS Letters; and associate editor, Molecular Biology and Evolution and PLoS Genetics. He has more than 400 publications in peer-reviewed international journals. He contributed to the DDBJ/GenBank/EMBL database and the H-Invitational human gene database.