Michinari Hamaguchi earned his PhD in medicine from Nagoya University. He was appointed Research Associate at the Nagoya University School of Medicine in 1980, and from then worked at Nagoya University except for the period 1985-1988 when he pursued his research at Rockefeller University in the U.S. He served as the President of Nagoya University from Apr. 2009 – Mar. 2015 before becoming the President of JST in Oct. 2015. He currently serves as Chairperson of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO and of the Council for Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in Japan.