Our Executives

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  CEOTakanobu Kawano

  Kawano served as a researcher of Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc., researching market risk management and algorithmic trading, etc. in the financial sector. Joined GREE, Inc. afterwards, and was in charge of coming up with business strategies, business management, new business development, as well as finance and accounting in the United States. He joined LPIXEL as the head of the corporate planning office, before founding VACAN. Certificate-holder Member of SAAJ. Project Management Professional (PMP®) Master’s Degree in Management of Technology (MOT), Tokyo Institute of Technology Graduate School of Innovation Management.

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  DirectorKiyoshi Shinohara

  Shinohara is a professional spatial and product designer. He became an apprentice under Mr. Itoh at Takayuki Itoh Design Office, which has offices in Italy and Japan, after winning a competition in Japan. He joined SonyPCL and engaged in corporate branding for companies such as Sony. He worked freelance in Canada as a designer, but was also active as a model for a fashion show. After returning to Japan, he worked for a major IT company, leading the services as a producer, manager, and director.

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  External DirectorMakoto Haruta

  Former Chairman at DeNA. Served as the company’s Chief Financial Officer for three years. Haruta first joined DeNA in February 2000, a year after its foundation, and became a board member in September. Prior to his tenure at DeNA, he worked at Sumitomo Bank for 8 years. Joined VACAN, Inc. as a management consultant in July 2017, became an independent director in June 2018. A graduate of Kyoto University with a law degree.

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  Technical AdvisorYoshihiro Kawahara

  Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. He is the associate professor in the Department of Information Technology and Science, the University of Tokyo. He has significant achievements in research related to ubiquitous computing and sensor networks, and created many hardware tech companies through his research projects. He became the research representative for JST Erato Kawahara Universal Information Network Project in 2015, aiming to create an autonomous IoT device that can work in harmony with nature and can withstand the changes in the environment. He holds a master’s degree in Information Science and Technology at the The University of Tokyo Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.

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  Technical AdvisorHideki Nakayama

  Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems, Graduate School of Engineering The University of Tokyo since 2012. In 2016, he became a researcher at the AIST. He has a PhD in Information Science and Technology. He was a special researcher (DC1) for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 2008 to 2011. He began researching multimodal data mining, machine learning methods, and applications after gaining interest in the cross-sectional understandings of images, videos, and text media. He is the recipient of the PRMU Research Encouragement Award, the Encouragement Prize from the Information Processing Society of Japan, and the Young Scientist Encouragement Award in the SI department of The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers Nakayama is a Graduate of The University of Tokyo Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechano-Informatics. He holds a master’s degree in Mechano-Informatics at The University of Tokyo Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.