We have been holding a series of events called “Find-Your-Role-Model” Sessions to provide students with opportunities to interact with alumni and global leaders in healthcare sciences. Through these roundtable-style, informal events, we hope students will find role models to help facilitate their career development and become future global leaders.

We are pleased to welcome Professor Tohru Yagi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the School of Engineering of Science Tokyo to speak about his career and research at this 78th session.
After completing his doctoral studies at Nagoya University Graduate School of Engineering in 1996, Professor Yagi became a Postdoctoral Researcher at RIKEN. He later became an Assistant Professor at the Nagoya University Graduate School of Engineering, researching visual prostheses. In 2005, he moved to the former Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech). From 2012 to 2013, he was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
Starting in 2022, he became a professor in the School of Engineering of the former Tokyo Tech, and now, Science Tokyo, continues to focus on biomedical engineering research, emphasizing neural engineering, the human brain and nervous system, vision, and bio-signals.
 

Topics

1) Career vision and professional background
　His “career vision” and how he found it; motivations for pursuing neural engineering; role models; and key career decisions

2) Major research
　Current research in neural engineering; the impact of university integration on medical-engineering collaboration; and prospects in the field

3) Mindset in research
　His research mindset; differences between the approach to research in Japan and the US; the resulting challenges; and how they were overcome 

3) Advice and encouragement
　Expectations for medical students from a science & engineering perspective; mindset for career choices; leadership in labs; and what students should start doing now