Board

Yumiko Mori
Co-founder & Chairperson

Graduated from Saint Mary’s College in California with a major in infant psychology and education. After completing a research fellowship at the Schizophrenia Biology Research Center in Palo Alto, affiliated with Stanford University, she joined the Japanese toy maker TOMY during her doctoral program in the Education Department at UCLA. She left the company in 1999 to work on the development of a space for children, so that she can demonstrate her own theories about how harmonization between the tool (toy), space and human relationships is beneficial in the development of children.

In April 2001, she established the R&D Center of Workshops for Children at Okawa Center CAMP (Children’s Art Museum & Park) in West-Japan Science City, Kyoto, sponsored by CSK Corporation as part of its social contribution program.
In 2002, she became a visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab and initiated Project Pangaea to create a universal playground in cyberspace, enabling young people worldwide to connect.

Toshiyuki Takasaki
Co-founder, Vice Chairperson, & CTO
Ph.D in Informatics

Obtained BA at Precision Engineering Dept. of Tokyo Univ. and MA at Graduate School of Frontier Science of Tokyo Univ. with Engineered Environmental Studies as his major. He studied wearable information networks and nature interface during the master’s program and experienced internships at the laboratories of Japan IBM and NTT DoCoMo, where he was involved in the development of the man-machine interface and the healthcare radio system using PHS.

He became a Research Affiliate of MIT Media Lab in 2001 as an assignee from Sega Corporation, Japan, and provided technical support, while also facilitating activities in starting up the R&D Center of Workshops for Children at Okawa Center CAMP (Children Art Museum and Park) located in West-Japan Science City, Kyoto, during this assignment. He experienced internship to develop RFID system at TagSense Inc. US, from 2002.

He started Project Pangaea as a Visiting Scientist of MIT Media Lab in 2002 with Ms. Yumiko Mori. The project was authorized as non-profit organization by Tokyo Prefecture in April 2003. His creative software projects were accepted twice by the Exploratory Software Project, sponsored by the Information Technology Promotion Agency Japan (the independent agency of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) in 2004 and 2006, which were managed by Prof. Toru Ishida in Kyoto University and Prof. David Farber in Carnegie Mellon University. He participated in “Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit” of Asia Society in 2007 as one of the Japanese delegates. He has been a part-time researcher in Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University from 2006 to 2012.
He received Ph.D in Informatics from Department of Social Informatics, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University in 2017. (He was selected as the representative of the Graduate School of Informatics at the Degree Conferment Ceremony.)

He pursues to form the respect of humanity by shifting the paradigm of thoughts from digital to analogue, in contrast with the technological trends developed in the reversed order in our time, which presents the alarming realities of global security and the difficult challenges in environmental sustainability. He is responsible for the R&D of Pangaea, in corporation with the international researchers, as a Peace Engineer.