Prof. Takeshi Iwata is the Director of Molecular and Cellular Division at the National Institute of Sensory Organs, National Hospital Organization (NHO) Tokyo Medical Center. He received his PhD from Meijo University and immediately joined the National Eye Institute (NEI) as a postdoctoral fellow to work on X-linked retinitis pigmentosa. He then moved to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in 1989 with his NEI supervisor and spent two years there. In 1991, he returned to the NEI to work on the transcriptional regulation of aldose reductase and sorbitol dehydrogenase, one of the major pathways of diabetic retinopathy. He returned to Japan and started his lab in 2000. His research is focused on the genetics of retinal and optic nerve diseases to understand the molecular mechanisms of disease onset. He has worked on age-related macular degeneration, inherited normal-tension glaucoma, inherited optic neuropathy, and inherited retinal diseases (IRDs). His research expands from the identification of novel disease-causing genes to the development of gene-edited animal models (mouse and non-human primates), the use of patient iPS cells to understand the mechanisms of disease onset, and the development of therapeutics. He has identified six novel genes (RP1L1, CCT2, C21orf2, LRRTM4, MCAT, METTL23) and is working on more IRD and glaucoma genes. He is currently the Head of the Japan Eye Genetics Consortium (JEGC, www.jegc.org) and the Global Eye Genetics Consortium (GEGC, www.gegc.org).