Dr. Ikoma was born in Tokyo in 1941. He graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo in 1963. He completed a doctor’s degree at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo and received a Doctorate of Engineering in 1968. In the same year, he became an assistant professor of the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, and in 1982 he became a professor at the institute. He gained experience as an affiliate researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, as an affiliate researcher at the IBM Watson Research Center, and as a distinguished lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, etc. between 1968 and 1982. He took up the post of the head of the Tsukuba Research and Development Center (TRDC), Texas Instruments Japan Limited in 1994, the president and representative director of the company in 1997, and the chairman and representative director of the company in February 2002. He was an advisor for the company from November 2002 to October 2003. He has been an affiliate professor of the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University from 2002 to 2006. Dr. Ikoma succeeded the post of the director-general of the Center for Research and Development Strategy (CRDS), JST in October 2004 and is a member of the Science Council of Japan. He has also experienced being the representative director of IEC Co., Ltd., an outside director of Hitachi Materials, Ltd., a non-executive board member of the Center for National University Finance and Management, a Chief Technology Advisor for Canon Inc., etc. His original specialty was semiconductor electronics. He has written many papers and delivered many lectures on corporate management, technical management, innovation, industry-academia collaborations, university innovations, etc.