Hiromi Hirata has been a professor of chemistry and biological sciences at Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan, since 2015. He was awarded his Ph.D. by Kyoto University in 2000 for research related to the characterization of mammalian molecular chaperones. He then investigated the molecular basis of oscillatory gene expression during somitogenesis in mice. He extended his interests into the development of zebrafish motor systems when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, USA. Professor Hirata started his own lab in 2010 at the National Institute of Genetics, Japan and eventually expanded the lab in the current university. The main focus of his research is the molecular mechanisms that govern the formation, plasticity, and aging of the neural circuits underlying sensorimotor integration in vertebrates.Atsuo Iida has been an assistant professor of regeneration science and engineering at the Institute for Frontier Life and Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, since 2012. Professor Iida obtained a Ph.D. from Nagoya University in 2006 for research related to DNA-based transposable elements in medaka. As a postdoctoral associate at Kyoto University, Dr. Iida initially examined various aspects of developmental biology using zebrafish, and then as an assistant professor he expanded his research to include viviparous reproduction utilizing redtail splitfin fish. His current interests include the regulatory mechanisms that govern blood vessel formation during zebrafish development as well as the mechanisms underlying viviparous reproduction in fish.
