Originally from Tokyo, Hideo Ohno graduated in 1977 from the University of Tokyo Faculty of Engineering, and received his doctorate in engineering in 1982 from the university’s Graduate School of Engineering.

He became a lecturer at Hokkaido University in 1982 and an associate professor in 1983. He later spent a year and a half at the IBM J. Watson Research Center beginning in 1988. He became a professor in 1994 at the Department of Engineering, Tohoku University and a professor at the university’s Research Institute of Electrical Communication in 1995 before serving as director of the Laboratory for Nanoelectronics and Spintronics 2004-2010. Since 2010 he has served as director of the Center for Spintronics Integrated Systems at Tohoku University, and as leading researcher on “Research and Development of Ultra-low Power Spintronics-based Logic VLSIs” under support from the Japanese government Cabinet Office’s “Funding Program for WorldLeading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology” (the FIRST Program).

He received the IBM Japan Science Award in 1998, the IUPAP Magnetism Prize in 2003, and appointment as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2004. In 2005 he was awarded the Japan Academy Prize, the Presidential Prize for Research Excellence, Tohoku University, and the Agilent Technologies EurophysicsPrize. The Institute of Semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences named him Honorary Professor in 2006. In 2007 he was also made a Fellow of the Japan Society of Applied Physics. In 2008 he was named Distinguished Professor by Tohoku University, and appointed as the IEEE Magnetics Society’s Distinguished Lecturer for 2009. In 2011 Professor Ohno was named a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate. Professor Ohno’s areas of specialization are semiconductor physics, semiconductor engineering, and spintronics.