Dr Kazuo Yano

Dr Kazuo Yano joined Hitachi as a researcher after receiving a M.Sc. from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 1984. He is known as a pioneer for his early works in the area of semiconductors, such as complementary pass-transistor logic (CPL) and the world-first room-temperature single-electron memories. In 2003, his research focus shifted to sensors and sensor networks, measuring and analyzing big data. The wearable sensor developed by Yano and his research team was introduced in the September 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review featuring the history of wearable sensors. His work on quantifying happiness from human big data has received much attention by the media, and has been applied to over 30 companies to raise the collective happiness level of employees in the workplace. Further, his work on multi-purpose artificial intelligence, which has already been applied to over 60 cases in 14 domains, is raising great interest across industries. His book, "The Invisible Hand of Data" (Soshisha, 2014) was described as one of top-10 business books in Japan in 2014 by Book Vinegar, and has been published in Chinese, Korean and in English. Yano is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Japan Society of Applied Physics, the Physical Society of Japan, the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence and the IEICE of Japan.