Ken comes from Sapporo, Japan. He loves soccer and plant science. He got a PhD at the Hokkaido University in Japan (2004) and did a postdoc at University of Minnesota in the US (2011). He was a Research Group Leader at Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ) until August 2019. He has been a Professor at HZAU and a guest Research Group Leader at MPIPZ from September 2019. He is interested in network properties, structures and dynamics in plant-microbe interactions, especially finding new concepts in biology.