Members

Greg Stephens obtained his Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Maryland with a dissertation in general relatively under the guidance of Bei-Lok Hu. He held postdoctoral positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory with Wojciech Zurek and Garret Kenyon, and, after a change in research direction to the physics of living systems, with William Bialek at Princeton University.  He is currently an associate professor of physics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and an adjunct professor at OIST Graduate University, where he leads the Biological Physics Theory Unit.  In 2022 he was honored as a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Naoko began her career in Tokyo, where she spent seven years in the wine industry as an online marketing specialist, gaining deep expertise in global markets. Seeking new challenges, she moved to the UK and worked as a market analyst at a consulting firm. While there, Naoko collaborated closely with Japanese blue-chip companies and traveled internationally for client meetings and market research, which helped her to deepen her global perspective. Her role at OIST bridges science and administration, ensuring the smooth operation of the unit.

Kosmas is a deep learning engineer, with a multidisciplinary background in Electrical Engineering (MSc, Twente University, the Netherlands) and Frontier Biosciences (PhD, Osaka University, Japan). In the Biological Physics Theory Unit, Kosmas is leading the zebrafish tracking pipeline, currently for two, and subsequently for more, fishes. Kosmas’ interests include artificial and living neuronal networks, evolutionary intelligence, and environmental AI.

I was born in Nagasaki, Japan. After completing my Ph.D. in insect physiology in Japan and France (with Teiich Tanimura at Kyushu University and with Frederic Maion-Poll at INA P-G), I moved to Berkeley, California, to work in the lab of Kristin Scott. Back in Japan, I worked with Tetsuya Tabata at Tokyo University. In 2020, I came to OIST, the Biological Physics Theory Unit and the Computational Neuroethology Unit. I am interested in how animals behave and react to their environments for which I engineer precise behavioral measurement systems. Besides work, I enjoy traveling, but my favorite is cycling along the Okinawa coast.

I graduated from Ben Gurion University in Israel with a bachelor's degree in medical laboratory science. There, I did bioinformatics research and worked at the local hospital. I then joined a material engineering lab at Penn State University. My first job at OIST was tending to the lovely animals at the marine station! In the Biological Physics Theory Unit, I perform behavior experiments as part of our efforts to understand social behavior in zebrafish. Having lived a few years on this beautiful island, it has become a character in my family’s life, with its own personality and quirks. Every day, I continue my conversation with Okinawa, by exploring its hidden places.