NAMI Ask the Expert: The Impact of Sound and Music

Dr. Kiminobu Sugaya
Dr. Kiminobu Sugaya has been a Professor and Head of Neuroscience in Burnett School of Biomedical Science, College of Medicine, University of Central Florida (UCF) since 2004. He is also the Chair of the Multidisciplinary Neuroscience Alliance of UCF, an Honorary Professor at INDICASAT, Panama, The University of United Arab Emirates, UAE and a visiting professor at Tohoku University, Japan. He moved from Japan to the U.S. as a post-doctoral fellow for Mayo Clinic in 1992 when he was a lecturer at the Science University of Tokyo. He was promoted to an associate consultant in 1994. Then he became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1997 and was promoted to an associate professor with tenure in 2002. He invented iPS cells in 2004, a year before the Japanese group filed their invention, using overexpression of embryonic stem cell gene, Nanog, from adult stem cells. He received the National Honor Plaque of Panama for exceptional contribution to neuroscience based on his study on stem cell therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. His research has been reported Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, and other media worldwide. He has been teaching a special seminar, “Music and the Brain,” at Burnett Honors College, UCF with Dr. Ayako Yonetani since 2005, which is a very popular class.