She is the executive vice president for research for Tohoku University, the former executive director of Riken, the former president of the Mathematical Society of Japan, and the president-elect of the International Science Council.
She went to Tokyo Metropolitan University for graduate study, earning a master's degree in 1985 and completing her doctorate in 1990.
[2] She was a lecturer at Toho University from 1990 to 1997, and an associate professor there from 1997 to 1999, with a term as a postdoctoral researcher in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics from 1993 to 1994.
[2] She became executive director of Riken from 2017 to 2020, while continuing to hold a position as a researcher at Tohoku.
[3] She became president-elect of the International Science Council in 2021, for a three-year term beginning in 2024.