Members

Ryo Iwasa, from Nagareyama City, Chiba, co-founded Aeterlink Corp in 2020 with Yuji Tanabe Ph.D. after meeting him by coincidence at Stanford University in 2017 while he was working for his first company, Okaya & Co., Ltd, to launch its Silicon Valley office to develop new businesses through collaboration with local companies.

Prior to establishing Aeterlink, at Okaya & Co., Ltd, he engaged in various automatic driving and electric vehicles related projects for Toyota Motor Corporation, Aisin Seiki, and Aisin AW. In these projects, he played a main role by organizing a large number of project members and related people, contributed in commercialization of many elemental technologies, and achieved annual sales of more than $100 million.

At Aetelink, he focuses on business development, project management, and other non-technical areas including general management. He has been featured in number of articles and TV programs by major medias such as Nikkei, TV Tokyo, etc. He won Startup Award in "Sta-ato" Pitch Japan sponsored by Nikkei.

He received his bachelor degree from Gakushuin University in 2015. In his leusure time, he enjoys playing and watching baseball, reading books, and cooking (his specialty is pasta and scrambled eggs).

Yuji Tanabe Ph.D., from Sunnyvale, California, co-founded Aeterlink Corp in 2020 with Ryo Iwasa after engaging in research and development at Stanford University on contactless power transmission and data communication systems for beam-focused transmitters and small implant receivers for medical microchip devices from 2011 to 2020 after receiving doctoral degree from Waseda University in 2010.

As CTO of Aterlink, he is responsible for technical area in general focusing on research and development on new technology. He has authored two books and published c. 50 papers including the one on the cover of Nature magazine, in addition to international media such as ABC, NBC, BBC news, and holds more than 10 patents. Also a member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the IEICE (Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers), and the IEEJ (Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan).

In his leisure time, he enjoys playing tennis and surfing.

Naoji Nomura, from Edogawa-ku, Tokyo, is an investment professional at Keio Innovation Initiative (KII) and engages in investing in startups and implementing technologies and inventions in society. He joined Aeterlink as External Director in 2021.

Prior to joining KII, he engaged in investment activities at INCJ (Innovation Network Corporation of Japan), the largest venture capital in Japan established and invested by the government, and at DOCOMO Innovations, a venture capital arm of NTT DOCOMO in Silicon Valley. Before turning into a venture capitalist, he was involved in development of wireless technology and prototyping, development, and commercialization of cell phones equipped with new charging technologies such as wireless power transfer at NTT DOCOMO.

He holds a B.S. and M.Eng. from Tokyo Institute of Technology and an MBA from HKUST Business School. In his private life, he enjoys listenint to and playing music, watching and playing basketball, and playing the board game "Catan."