He earned his Master and Bachelor of Engineering degrees in chemical engineering from Kansai University in Osaka, Japan in 1997 and 1999, respectively. After working as an R&D engineer at Organo Corporation in Saitama, Japan for four years, he completed his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. in 2007. Then he carried out his postdoctoral study at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg, Germany, supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. His research interests include modeling, optimization, and design of novel separation processes for chemical, pharmaceutical, and energy industries, such as simulated moving bed chromatography, crystallization, and adsorption process for carbon capture.