XEUREKA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- President
- Representative Director
Akiko joined Mitsui & Co. in 2000. In 2002 she started working in the current ICT Business Division, engaged in strategic planning and sales. Her responsibilities included supporting the development of foreign markets for Japanese mobile communication operators, facilitating the overseas expansion of mobile content services, and investing in internet-related ventures. Starting from 2020, she served as the General Manager of the Business Management Dept., supporting the management of affiliated companies within the ICT Business Division. Additionally, from 2020 to 2023, she held a position as a non-executive director at Mitsui Bussan Secure Direction.
She has been in her current position since May 2023.
Interests
Travelling, Playing baseball with her children
Job Titles:
- Drug Discovery Project Manager / Business Development & Partnership Div.
Hiroki has 20 years of extensive experience in the Dry area of the bioscience industry.
After joining Mitsui Knowledge Industry in 2002, he has supported a wide range of research in terms of bioinformatics with many laboratories from the national universities, independent research and development corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and the R&D departments of food, chemical, and equipment manufacturers throughout Japan. He has co-authored and published widely on the methods developed and systems implemented as a result of these research efforts.
From 2017, he oversaw and expanded the business performance of the company's bioscience division, including cancer genome clinical sequencing and mass spectrometer software development. Later, while working on the development of new businesses, he explored the possibility of an AI drug discovery business with a focus on computational drug discovery, and conducted PoC studies in collaboration with Mitsui & Co. This lead to the establishment of Xeureka.
Job Titles:
- Product Engineering Manager / Science & Technology Div.
Job Titles:
- Tech Lead / Science & Technology Div.
Kenichi has 15 years of experience as an informatics specialist in various areas of chemistry (drug discovery, materials development, chemical plants, etc.).
He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). Since 2010 he has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at RIKEN, the Noguchi Institute, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the iPS Cell Research Institute, Kyoto University, and the University of Tokyo. From 2017 he worked as an Assistant Professor in the Funatsu Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. He has collaborated with about 30 chemical companies in Japan, providing consulting services on machine learning and data science.
He joined Xeureka in September 2022.
Interests
Competitive programming, basketball, cycling, watching movies
Worked as a system engineer/professional manager at Fujitsu Ltd. for 21 years. Naoki engaged in the bioinformatics field as a system construction and operations project manager for organizations and research institutes affiliated with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. After that, he was involved in project management for business systems construction in the Middle East, environmental monitoring, and monitoring system construction and operation, He joined Xeureka in August 2023 as Tokyo-1 Senior Technical Manager. Current position from April 2024.
Job Titles:
- General Manager / Science & Technology Div.
Ryushi worked for Astellas Pharma for 23 years as a medicinal chemist and was involved in numerous drug discovery projects in various disease areas, contributing to the discovery of 5 development compounds and 9 development candidate compounds. Leading the digital transformation of small molecule drug discovery, he developed multiple predictive models using machine learning, automated model updating, molecular generation, and various data analysis functions. He also designed and implemented a user-centric UI/UX, and constructed an AI drug discovery platform that integrated all of these functions.
He possesses extensive practical experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with expertise not only in medicinal chemistry but also in combinatorial chemistry, cheminformatics, and AI. Additionally, he has advanced skills in the open-source software KNIME.
He joined Xeureka in October 2023.
Interests
Playing soccer, watching TV dramas, stock investment, KNIME
Job Titles:
- Product Engineering Manager / Science & Technology Div.
Seiken received his Ph.D. from University of Tokyo in 2007 for his work on density functional theory of quantum chemical calculations. He was engaged in in silico drug discovery research at Taisho Pharmaceutical for 15 years, where he was in charge of Ligand-based Drug Design (LBDD), Structure-based Drug Design (SBDD), chemoinformatics and drug discovery research by quantum chemical calculation. He was in charge of software development at a system development company. Implemented a long-range correction method for density functional theory in the quantum chemistry program (GAMESS).
He has been in his current position since October 2023.
Interests
Reading, Cycling, Stock Trading
Job Titles:
- Science & Technology Div.
Takeru received Ph.D. from Hiroshima University in 2021, and after several years of In Silico drug discovery at Sumitomo Pharma, he joined Xeureka.
While conducting In Silico studies based on biomolecular dynamics and free energy calculations using numerical calculations, he is challenging the development of innovative in silico drug discovery technologies by integrating data-driven sciences.
He has been in his current position since April 2023.
Interests
Baseball, Video Games
Job Titles:
- Director
- General Manager
- Director, General Manager / Business Development & Partnership Div.