The 2025 MIT Japan Conference will explore future research trends at MIT, highlighting breakthroughs in key areas such as Soft Materials and Mechanics, Biomedical Innovation, and the impact of Generative AI (GAI) on the Work of the Future. Additional sessions will focus on Quantum and Silicon Photonics, Nanotechnology in materials and additive manufacturing, and the latest Machine Learning and AI tools for chemical discovery. Advances in semiconductor technology, hydrogen innovation, and electrochemistry, as well as thermofluidic interfaces, will also be featured.
Attendees will have the opportunity to engage in in-depth discussions with MIT faculty speakers and MIT Startup Exchange companies during both lunch and an evening networking reception.
Steve Palmer is a Senior Director within MIT’s Office of Corporate Relations. Steven comes to OCR with many years of experience building relationships, advancing diplomacy, and seeking new business initiatives in both the public and private sectors. He has spent his career highlighting and translating technological issues for policy makers, engineers, analysts, and business leaders. Steven has worked in government, industry, and academia in the U.S. and abroad. He is also an Executive Coach at MIT Sloan and Harvard Business School. Steven earned his Bachelor of Science at Northeastern University, and his M.B.A. at MIT Sloan where he was in the Fellows Program for Innovation and Global Leadership.
Xuanhe Zhao is a professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering (by courtesy) at MIT. The mission of Zhao Lab at MIT is to advance science and technology between humans and machines for addressing grand societal challenges in health and sustainability with integrated expertise in mechanics, materials and biotechnology. A major focus of Zhao Lab is the study and development of soft materials and systems.
Dr. Zhao is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, SES Young Investigator Medal, ASME Hughes Young Investigator Award, Adhesion Society’s Young Scientist Award, Materials Today Rising Star Award, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher. He held the Hunt Faculty Scholar at Duke University, and the d'Arbeloff Career Development Chair and Noyce Career Development Professorship at MIT.
Bioadhesive ultrasound based on Zhao Lab's work published in Science was selected among 2022 TIME Magine Best Inventions; SanaHeal Inc based on Zhao Lab’s work published in Nature won 2023 Nature Spinoff Prize. Over ten patents from Zhao Lab have been licensed by companies and contributed to FDA-approved and widely-used medical devices.
Dr. Stacy Springs is the Executive Director at the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation (CBI). The Center integrates the Institute’s technical, scientific, and management expertise to solve complex biopharmaceutical challenges. CBI leads multi-stakeholder, multidisciplinary research and educational initiatives with real world impact, including MIT’s Biomanufacturing Consortium, (BioMAN), and it’s Consortium on Adventitious Agent Contamination in Biomanufacturing, (CAACB). Dr. Springs is a principle investigator on several research programs in biologics manufacturing, from application of data analytics and PAT in the continuous production of monoclonal antibodies, viral vectors and vaccines, to development of innovative rapid sterility tests and new approaches to adventitious agent contamination through long read sequencing.
Dr. Springs is part of the leadership of SMART CAMP, an interdisciplinary research group focused on Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and serves as the Chair of Landmark Bio’s Science and Technology Committee.
Dr. Springs’ research interests include biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing, risk management, regulatory and translational science and food safety and food supply chains. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin and gained postdoctoral training in protein and biophysical chemistry at Princeton University.
Ben Armstrong is the Executive Director and a Research Scientist at MIT’s Industrial Performance Center, where he co-leads the Work of the Future initiative. His research and teaching examine how workers, firms, and regions adapt to technological change. His current projects include a working group on generative AI and its impact on jobs, as well as a book on American manufacturing competitiveness. His research has been published or featured in academic and popular outlets including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Sloan Management Review, Times Higher Education, Boston Review, Daedalus, and Economic Development Quarterly.
Previously, Ben was a Research Fellow and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University, where he studied how workers, policymakers, and the public think about automation and taught courses on technology, public policy, and capitalism. He worked with the Provost to spearhead the Brown and the Innovation Economy initiative, which developed a strategy for the university to contribute to good job growth in the region, and a faculty colloquium on the future of work. In partnership with the State of Rhode Island and others, he studied the longest autonomous vehicle public transit route in the United States to date.
Ben completed his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University and his PhD at MIT, where he received the Lucian Pye Award for Outstanding Political Science PhD Dissertation. Before graduate school, he helped lead an open-source hardware non-profit and worked at Google Inc.
Sean (Shunsuke) Matsuoka has experience in marketing at Sony, management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and business development at M3 Inc. and caresyntax. Sean brings a wealth of experience in business development across diverse sectors, including notable companies like Mitsubishi Corporation (MC Healthcare), Takeda Pharmaceutical (Whiz Partners), and Fujifilm. His ability to foster collaborations, especially within pharmaceuticals and medical devices, is highlighted by his track record of managing deals with industry leaders. Holding degrees from Keio University and Harvard Business School, he is a versatile leader poised to drive impactful growth and innovation.
Evan Haas is CEO & Co-Founder of Helix Carbon, an industrial decarbonization company that turns CO2 into carbon-negative industrial chemicals. Prior to Helix, he was the Senior Fellow at E14 Fund, the MIT-affiliated venture fund that invests in deep technology startups, and a consultant at BCG where he focused on military aerospace and climate technology commercialization & policy with Breakthrough Energy and the Biden Administration. Evan holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and MBA from MIT.
Abhi Yadav is a serial entrepreneur and AI innovator at the forefront of customer experience, identity, and AI. He is the Founder & CEO of iCustomer, a pioneering decision intelligence company, focused on GTM optimization to start with.
With a proven track record of building and successfully exiting enterprise AI software startups in Customer Data Platform (CDP) and consumer identity spaces, Abhi has transformed digital innovations for global leaders like GM, Nike, Google, Travellers, Amex and Cisco to name a few. His expertise spans Financial, consumer goods, and high-tech sectors.
Abhi co-founded the AI Innovators Community (AIC), a prestigious network of over 1,000 corporate, academic, and startup executives driving applied AI innovation. His actionable insights on overcoming AI adoption challenges and maximizing its marketing potential stem from extensive collaborations with Fortune 500 companies and cutting-edge AI startups.
An alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with both engineering and MBA degrees. His is on a mission for AI-driven, privacy-compliant personalization and decision science driven modern enterprise.
Maher Damak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Infinite Cooling, a start-up out of MIT that helps industrial and commercial customers achieve efficiency, productivity, and sustainability goals by enhancing and optimizing cooling towers in various processes.
Josh Santos is co-founder and CEO of Noya, an Oakland-based startup that is reversing climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Josh holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT and has experience building B2B products and services from scratch, scaling technology as a Project Manager on the Tesla Model 3 program, and leading R&D teams as the first ever Program Manager for Harley Davidson’s electric vehicle division. In his free time, Josh enjoys reading and sailing in the San Francisco Bay.
Ryan Hamerly was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1988. He graduated from Boulder High School in 2006 and received a B.S. degree from Caltech in 2010, working with Prof. Yanbei Chen on black hole mergers. In 2016 he received a Ph.D. degree in applied physics from Stanford, for work with Prof. Hideo Mabuchi on quantum control, nanophotonics, and nonlinear optics. In 2017 he was at the National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo), working with Prof. Yoshihisa Yamamoto on quantum annealing and optical computing concepts. He is currently an IC postdoctoral fellow at MIT with Prof. Dirk Englund.
Carlos M. Portela is the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Prof. Portela received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, where he was given the Centennial Award for the best thesis in Mechanical and Civil Engineering, and he received degrees in Aerospace Engineering (B.S.) and Physics (B.A.) from the University of Southern California. At Caltech he worked on exploring the mechanical response of 3D architected materials from experimental and computational perspectives. He joined MIT in August of 2020.
Heather J. Kulik is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at MIT. She received her B.E. in Chemical Engineering from Cooper Union in 2004 and her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT in 2009. She completed postdocs at Lawrence Livermore (2010) and Stanford (2010−2013), prior to returning to MIT as a faculty member in 2013 and receiving tenure in 2021. She was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 2024.
Her work has been recognized by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (2012-2017), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2018), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2018), AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award (2019-2020), NSF CAREER Award (2019), the ACS COMP Division OpenEye Award for Outstanding Junior Faculty in Computational Chemistry, the JPCB Lectureship (ACS PHYS), the DARPA Director’s Fellowship (2020), a Sloan Fellowship (2021), the AIChE CoMSEF Impact award (2023), and a TUM Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship (2023).
Professor Abate earned a BS in physics at Minnesota State University Moorehead in 2015, an MS in materials science and engineering at Stanford University in 2018, and a PhD at Stanford in 2021. His PhD focused on designing high-performance materials for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries and elucidating their reaction mechanism. Before joining Stanford, he was a researcher at IBM Alamden, working on metal-air batteries, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, on hybrid perovskite solar cells. He was also Miller and Presidential Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, working on layered materials for application in computing, catalysis, and sensing. Professor Abate is also a co-founder and president of a nonprofit organization, SciFro, working to empower youth in African and underrepresented communities in the US to solve local problems through scientific research and innovation. The organization is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Science Foundation, American Physical Society, and others.
Kripa K. Varanasi is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his B.Tech from IIT Madras, India and his SM (ME and EECS) and Ph.D from MIT. Prior to joining MIT as a faculty member, Prof. Varanasi was a lead researcher and project leader at the GE Global Research Center.
At GE he received many awards for his work including Best Patent, Best Technology Project and Leadership Award. At MIT, the focus of his work is in understanding the physico-chemical phenomena at interfaces and developing novel materials, devices, and products that can dramatically enhance performance in energy, water, agriculture, transportation, medical, and consumer devices. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and translating technologies from lab to market. He has co-founded multiple companies including LiquiGlide, Dropwise, Infinite Cooling, and Everon24. Time and Forbes Magazines have named LiquiGlide to their “Best Inventions of the Year”. His Infinite Cooling project has won first prize at DOE’s National Cleantech University Prize, first prize Rice Business Plan Competition, first prize Harvard Business School Energy & Environment Start-up, first prize at MIT-100K, first prize at MassChallenge.
Prof. Varanasi has received numerous awards for his work NSF Career Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Heat Transfer Award, Boston Business Journal’s 40 under 40. ASME Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award for outstanding achievements in Mechanical Engineering, APS Milton van Dyke award, and MIT Graduate Student Council’s Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising.