Ken-ichi Kitayama is a Research Fellow at Hamamatsu Photonics Central Research Laboratory, a professor emeritus of Osaka University, a project professor at Graduate School for the Creation of New Photonics Industries (GPI), and the R&D advisor of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) since 2016. He also serves as the research supervisor of 40million USD CREST program, entitled “Next-Gen Optics and Photonics” funded by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).

In 1976, he joined the NTT Electrical Communication Laboratory. In 1982-1983, he spent a year as a visiting research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995, he joined the Communications Research Laboratory (currently NICT), Tokyo. He became a full professor at Osaka University in 1999.

He has authored and co-authored more than 300 journal papers and published a book, “Optical Code Division Multiple Access -A Practical Perspective”. He holds more than 30 patents, and he received the PhD degree from Osaka University in 1981.