Born and educated in Italy he obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Trieste in 1989. From 1990 to 1995 he developed technologies for DNA extraction and DNA sequencing at Talent, a spin-off biotech.

He moved to Japan in 1995 at RIKEN and became tenure researcher in 1997. He has been developing technologies to capture full-length cDNAs, which were used for the construction of the FANTOM projects.  Between 2008 and 2013, he was a Team and Unit Leader and a Deputy Project Director at the RIKEN Omics Science Center. He has developed technologies to analyze the transcribed part of the genome (transcriptome), such as the cap-trapper and the CAGE. These technologies have been broadly used in the RIKEN FANTOM projects and allowed identifying non-coding RNAs as are the major output of the mammalian genome and providing comprehensive maps of the mammalian promoters.

From 2013 to 2018, he was Director of the Division of Genomics Technologies and Deputy Director of the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies. Subsequently, he became Deputy Director of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in April 2018. He is currently focusing on broad profiling of lncRNA functions in the FANTOM6 and expression of RNAs in the Human Cell Atlas projects.

He has published more than 320 papers and book chapters, edited books and is a member of editorial boards of various scientific journals.

- Full Professor at the University of Tokyo

- Director of the International Muography Research Organization of the University of Tokyo

- Head of the Center for High Energy Geophysics Research of the Earthquake Research Institute

- Japanese Coordinator of the Horizon 2020 MSCA-RISE collaborative programme INTENSE (awarded in 2018)

Prof. Enrico Traversa in 1986 got his “Laurea” (Italian Doctoral Degree), Summa cum Laude, in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rome La Sapienza. From March 2013 he joined the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. From April 2012, he is the Director of the Department of Fuel Cell Research at the International Center for Renewable Energy, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. He joined the University of Rome Tor Vergata in 1988. From January 2009 to March 2012, he was a Principal Investigator at the International Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan, leading a unit on Sustainability Materials. Since 2005 he is Graduate Faculty at the University of Florida, USA, and in 2010-2012 he was Adjunct Professor at Waseda University and at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Since 2017, he is working at the Embassy of Italy in Japan as the Science and Technology Attache.

Shuji Hashimoto is a Professor Emeritus of Waseda University. He was a Professor with the Department of Applied Physics, Waseda University. He was the Director of the Humanoid Robotics Institute, Waseda University for ten years since 2000. He served as the Senior Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of Waseda University since 2010 untill 2018.

He is the author of over 400 technical publications, proceedings, editorials, and books. His research interests include "KANSEI" information processing, image and sound processing, artificial intelligence and robotics. He is a member of major academic societies including IEEE, RSJ(Robotic Society of Japan and JFace(Japanese Academy of Facial Studies).

He was awarded in 2018 the title of Commander in the Order of the Merit of the Italian Republic, which is the country’s highest ranking honor and is bestowed upon those who make a major contribution to Italy in the fields of sciences, arts, philanthropy and more.

The award recognized Vice President Hashimoto’s research achievements in robotics, including his contribution to the Japan-Italy cooperation in the fields of science and technology, particularly in humanoid and service robotics; the promotion and realization of a joint laboratory between Waseda University and Italy’s Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies; and the development of various systems suitable for communication between humans and machines, such as image and digital audio analysis systems for humanoid robots.

Professor Hashimoto also worked on KANSEI (emotional) information processing in computer music systems together with Italian researchers including Professor Antonio Camurri of University of Genova who invited him to join the FP7 projects.