Biography

Dr. Miyoko O. Watanabe serves at Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) as Executive Director, and Director of Office for Diversity and Inclusiveness.

She has a long experience of research in semiconductor physics at Toshiba R&D Center in Japan, and also conducted physics research as Postdoctoral Fellow in Dalhousie University, Canada, in 1986-1988 and as Visiting Researcher at Nanoscale Physics Research Laboratory, The University of Birmingham, U.K. in 1997. Returning to Toshiba, she worked as Senior Research Scientist and as Senior Quality Expert at Toshiba R&D Center. After them, she served at different positions, including that of Chief Specialist at Audit Division, Group Leader at Power Systems Company, and Executive Quality Leader at Innovation Division at the headquarters of Toshiba.

Dr. Watanabe joined JST in 2013 and is serving there up to now. She worked as Fellow at Center for Research and Development Strategy and as Program Director for Research and Development Programs Focused on Technology Transfer in 2013. She served present positions including Deputy Executive Director in JST in 2014.

She also worked as Council member of Science and Technology Council at Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2012-2017, as Chairperson of Japan Women Engineers Forum in 2012-2014, and as Auditor at National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan in 2013-2015.

Dr. Watanabe was Council Member of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) from 2011 to 2017, Chair of Committee on Comprehensive and Synthetic Engineering in SCJ since 2014, and a member of Specialist Committee on Gender Equality in the Council for Gender Equality of the Japanese Cabinet Office since 2014. She is now Member of SCJ. 

Currently, she was the chair of both of Science Agora in 2015 and 2016 and Gender Summit 10 in Tokyo in 2017.