Katsuhiko Shirahige, PhD, is Professor and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at the University of Tokyo and Visiting Professor at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. He pioneered genomic approaches that transformed chromosome biology, from mapping budding-yeast replication origins to inventing ChIP-chip arrays and revealing cohesin’s roles in segregation and transcriptional insulation. Using next-generation sequencing, his group linked altered chromatin architecture to genetic disease, uncovering cohesin’s impact on transcription initiation and elongation. Shirahige has published over 230 papers, holds an h-index of 74, and formerly presided over Japan’s Molecular Biology Society, earning numerous awards.