Rate My Professor Shinya Yamanaka

Shinya Yamanaka is Director Emeritus and Professor in the Department of Life Science Frontiers at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University. He earned his M.D. from Kobe University School of Medicine in 1987 and his Ph.D. from Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine in 1993. His early career included a residency at National Osaka Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco. He subsequently held positions as Research Associate at Osaka City University Medical School, Associate Professor and then Professor at Nara Institute of Science and Technology, and Professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University beginning in 2004. He was appointed Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institutes in 2007 and Professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) at Kyoto University the same year. Yamanaka served as Director of CiRA from 2008 until 2022, when he became Director Emeritus while continuing as Professor.

Yamanaka’s research focuses on stem cell biology and cellular reprogramming. In 2006, his laboratory generated induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from mouse somatic cells by introducing four defined transcription factors, demonstrating that these cells possess properties similar to embryonic stem cells. This breakthrough was extended to human cells the following year. His work has advanced understanding of pluripotency and enabled applications in regenerative medicine, disease modeling, and drug discovery. Yamanaka has received numerous honors, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2009, the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2011, the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology in 2010, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2013. He maintains affiliations with the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco.