President

KATO Kazuto
President
Science Council of Japan, the 27th Term

KATO Kazuto has served as the President of the Science Council of Japan since October 2026. He is a Specially Appointed Professor of the ELSI Team, Premium Research Institute for Human Metaverse Medicine (WPI-PRIMe), University of Osaka, and has been an Academic Affiliate of the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX), University of Oxford, since 2019. He served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Ethics and Public Policy, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Osaka, from 2012 to 2026.

He received his Doctor of Science degree from Kyoto University in 1989. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge in the laboratory of Sir John B. Gurdon from 1990 to 1993, and subsequently served as a Researcher at JT Biohistory Research Hall and as an Associate Professor at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.

He has served on various international expert and ethics committees, including the International Panel of Experts (IPE) of the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) of Singapore, the Ethics and Governance Committee (AEGC) of ICGC-ARGO (The International Cancer Genome Consortium, Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology), and the Ethics Committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). Since July 2026, he has been a Member of the ISSCR Board of Directors. He was also a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing. His areas of expertise include ethical, legal and social issues of emerging life sciences and medical technologies, research governance, and patient and public involvement in medical research.