Itaru Hamachi was born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, in 1960 and received his Ph.D. in 1988 from Kyoto University under the guidance of the late Professor Iwao Tabushi. Immediately thereafter he joined Kyushu University, where he worked as an assistant professor for 3 years in Kunitake laboratory and became an associate professor in Shinkai laboratory in 1992. In 2001, he became a full professor of IFOC, Kyushu University and then moved to Kyoto University in 2005. He had been a PRESTO investigator for 7 years (from 2000 to 2006) and has been a team leader of two CREST projects (from 2008 to 2013 and then from 2013 to 2018), which all are supported by Japan Science and Technology (JST) Agency. He is now a supervisor of a PRESTO project (Single cell analysis) in JST program from 2014-2019. His research interests include live-cell organic chemistry, chemical biology, bioorganic and bioinorganic chemistry, and supramolecular biomaterials.