Hiroko Akiyama Professor, Institute of Gerontology University of Tokyo Tokyo

Wharton Speaker >> Biography

Hiroko Akiyama, a social psychologist, is professor at the Institute of Gerontology, University of Tokyo. Professor Akiyama has conducted a number of cross-national surveys and is widely recognized as an expert on issues of global aging. She is known for the long-running research on the elderly in Japan—tracking the aging patterns of approximately 6,000 Japanese elderly for more than 20 years. Recently she initiated social experiment projects that pioneer to re-design communities to meet the needs of the highly aged society and allow the elderly to successfully ‘age-in-place’. She formed an interdisciplinary gerontology program at University of Tokyo in 2006.

Professor Akiyama received a Ph.D. in psychology from University of Illinois in the United States, and is the former vice president of Science Council of Japan.