Design engineer and professor of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo Sunji Yamanaka will be presenting a lecture titled "Design-Led Innovation: Prototyping for Envisioning the Future" on Friday, November 4, 2016.

Shunji Yamanaka graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, in 1982 and joined the Nissan Motors Design Center the same year, after which he became an independent industrial designer in 1987. Since 2013 he has been a professor at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include design engineering, product design and usability engineering. He is a creator of numerous products and basic technologies—from automobiles, cameras, watches, robots, mobile phones, furniture to the design of interface for mass-transit smart card machines—based on a design approach fusing art and technology. His recent focus is on exploring new relationships between humans and things with works such as "the Beautiful Prosthetic Limbs" and "Robots Resembling Living Creatures."