MIRAI

 Prof. Anders Ynnerman received a PhD in physics from Gothenburg University in 1992. In 1997 he was appointed director of the Swedish National Supercomputer Centre (NSC) and in 2002 he founded the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing, which he directed until 2007. Prof. Ynnerman is currently holding the chair in scientific visualization at Linköping University and he is the founder and director of the Norrköping Visualization Center, a focal point for visualization and graphics research and development in Europe. The center has a public arena with a large-scale dome theater and interactive exhibits, showcasing visualization research and applications. An integrated strand of his research is thus visualization for public engagement in science.

 Visualization of astrophysical data has been a signature application throughout his career. His recent NASA funded work on the OpenSpace platform has received large attention in both astrophysics and visualization research. For instance, the OpenSpace subsystem for browsing planetary surfaces received the IEEE SciVis best paper award in 2017.  A substantial part of Ynnerman’s research contribution lies in the medical domain, and his work on volume rendering and volumetric shading has led to commercialization efforts such as the medical visualization table used for teaching medical students, but also a public domain version used in museums. An example of such an installation is described in his 2016 article in Communications of the ACM, in which the mummy visualization table at the British Museum is featured.

 Prof. Ynnerman has received several awards for his research contributions, such as the Akzo Nobel Science Award in 2007, the Athena Award for medical clinical research in 2009, the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences Gold medal in 2011, HM the King’s medal for contributions to medical image science in 2017, and the IEEE VGTC Technical Achievement Award in 2018. Ynnerman is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

 Prof. Hiroshi Amano received his BE, ME and DE degree in 1983, 1985 and 1989, respectively, from Nagoya University, Japan. From 1988 to 1992, he was a research associate at Nagoya University. In 1992, he moved to Meijo University, where he was an assistant professor, associate professor from 1998 till 2002, and professor from 2002 till 2010. He moved to Nagoya University, where he was a professor of Graduate School of Engineering from 2011 till 2015. On Oct. 1, 2015, he became a director of Center for Integrated Research of Future Electronics (CIRFE), Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS), Nagoya University. He has also been the director of the Akasaki Research Center (Akasaki Institute), Nagoya University since 2011.

 During his doctoral program at the Nagoya University Graduate School of Engineering, he was able to realize high-quality epitaxially grown GaN film with metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy, p-type GaN filmdoped with Mg while conducting research with Professor Akasaki.For the first time in history, he established the technology necessary for the production of blue LEDs, thus performing a great achievement the development of the high-luminosity blue LED.

 He is currently developing technologies for the fabrication of high-efficiency power semiconductor development and new energy-saving devices at Nagoya University. He has more than 560 publications. Prof. Amano shared the Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 with Prof. Isamu Akasaki and Prof. Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".