Toshio Yanagida did his undergraduate and graduate studies in semi-conductor physics at Osaka University (Osaka, Japan). He then switched to biophysics in 1970 to pursue a career in basic science. He is now professor and Dean of the Osaka University Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, and project leader at both the Single Molecule Processes Project and the Kansai Advanced Research Center Communications in Japan. His teams are leading the development of single-molecule detection techniques to investigate the molecular motor of contracting muscle.
Professor Yanagida is a founding editor of the Journals "Single Molecules" and "Small". For his scientific achievements, he has received numerous awards, among them the Japan Academy Award and the Japanese Imperial Award.

Yoshiharu Ishii studied physics and biophysics at the Universities of Tokyo and Nagoya (Japan). From 1983 onwards he worked at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute (USA), returning to Japan in 1992 to pursue his research career in applied biophysics. He is currently a group leader in the soft nanomachine project at Osaka University.