Fumiaki is the representative director and country head of Ginward Japan K.K. He is responsible for consulting life science companies on Japanese market entry– including portfolio companies from the Gold Nest Private Capital family, as well as bridging opportunities into Europe for young Japanese companies in life science.
Prior to Ginward, he has enjoyed an established scientific career in the field of structural biology/protein biochemistry. His main interest was in understanding transcriptional regulation and the cell fate determination. Fumiaki has worked in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of California – San Francisco (UCSF), and the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. He was the project manager of the Stem Cell Biology project in the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI:Biology) funded by National Institute of Health, USA and built a network of key opinion leaders through collaborations with scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, Stanford University, Genomics Institute of Novartis Foundation, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Methodist Hospital Research Institute, etc.
As associate professor at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan, he led to establish the first cryo-electron microscopy facility on campus and supported in building a nationwide structural biology community. He also organized numerous local and international workshops and seminars for the structural biology community and was a guest speaker in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg.
During his time in the San Francisco Bay Area, he was exposed to the biotech start-up culture and witnessed how companies started and changed lives. His passion to build such an ecosystem from Tokyo, Japan – by connecting European, American, and Asian countries – makes him an invaluable contributor to the team at Ginward.
Fumiaki is a native Japanese speaker and fluent in English.
Fumiaki obtained his PhD from University of Tokyo, Japan in Applied Biological Chemistry.
