Prof. Dr Kazuya Yoshida (Dr Eng.) is currently Full Professor and Head of the Space Robotics Laboratory at the Department of Aerospace Engineering of Tohoku University. He served as Research Associate at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Visiting Scientist of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995 he was appointed as Associate Professor at Tohoku University, and since 2003 he is in the current position. He also serves as Technology Advisor of ispace Inc., a start-up company for the lunar resource exploration business.

Yoshida has been working on a variety of robotics research topics concerning the dynamics and control of space robotic systems, ranging from orbital free-flying robots to planetary exploration rovers. The applications are extended to the development of university-based micro-satellites for Earth observations and micro-robots to explore micro-gravity surfaces such as asteroids. He has more than 300 peer-reviewed academic publications, with a total citation of more than 9,500 counts and h-index=48 (by Google Scholar as of June 2020).