Hiroko Akiyama, a gerontologist, is a professor of emeritus at the University of Tokyo and the former vice president of the Science Council of Japan.　Professor Akiyama has conducted a number of cross-national surveys and is widely recognized as an expert on issues of global aging. She is known for her long-running research on the elderly in Japan, which tracked the aging patterns of approximately 6,000 Japanese elderly over 30 years. She also initiated social experiment projects that pioneer re-design communities to meet the needs of the highly aged society, and more recently, Kamakura Living Lab, a platform for open innovation by co-creation among users, industry, government, and academia. She started the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Tokyo in 2006. Professor Akiyama received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois in the United States.