Shizuo Akira is a director and professor of WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center, and also a professor in Institute for Microbial Diseases at Osaka University, Japan. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Osaka University. After two years of postdoctoral working in Department of Immunology, University of California at Berkeley, he started to study on IL-6 gene regulation and signaling in the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Osaka University, and cloned transcription factors, NF-IL6(C/EBP beta) and STAT3. He was a professor in Department of Biochemistry, Hyogo College of Medicine from 1996 to 1999, where he became involved in Toll-like receptors research. By generating TLR family knockout mice, he identified ligands of many TLR members. He also demonstrated that the difference in signaling pathway among TLRs is due to selective usage of adaptor molecules such as MyD88 and TRIF. He demonstrated that pathogen-derived RNA is recognized by cytoplasmic receptor family, besides TLRs, and clarified the molecular mechanism of antiviral response against RNA viruses. His current research interests are molecular mechanisms of innate immunity and inflammation, which are studied mainly by generating knockout mice. Awards and Honors: 2004 Robert Koch Prize (Robert Koch Foundation, Germany), 2006 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology (Cancer Research Institute, USA), 2007 Imperial Prize and Japan Academy Prize (Japan Academy), 2009 National Academy of Sciences of USA, Foreign Associate, 2009 Person of Cultural Merit (Japanese Government), 2010 Keio International Medical Science Prize (Keio University), 2010 Avery-Landsteiner Prize (German Society for Immunology), 2010 EMBO Associate Member