Rate My Professor Makoto Ikeya

Makoto Ikeya is an Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Application at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University. He graduated from the Faculty of Science at Kyoto University in 1996 and earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Science at Kyoto University in 1998 and 2001, respectively. His early career included positions as a researcher at RIKEN from 2001, a research fellow at RIKEN from 2007, associate professor at the Institute of Molecular Embryology and Genetics at Kumamoto University from 2009, and researcher at the Institute for Frontier Medical Science at Kyoto University from 2010 before joining CiRA in 2011.

His research focuses on the clinical applications of iPS cells, including cell therapy, disease modeling, and drug discovery. The laboratory develops methods for inducing differentiation into neural crest cells, somite cells, lateral plate mesoderm cells, and mesenchymal stem cells, with applications to conditions such as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Ikeya has received several honors, including the 5th CiRA Award in 2018, the Murao Scholarship Association Academic Encouragement Prize in 2018, the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine Award in 2018, the German Innovation Award Gottfried Wagener Prize in 2018, and the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2019.