Motoko Kotani

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.