Haruhiko Siomi received his B. S. (1982) and his M.S. (1984) from the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at Gifu University, and his Ph. D. (1988) from the Department of Medical Science at Kyoto University. He received a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science to do postdoctoral work at the Institute for Virus Research at Kyoto University. He subsequently joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine as a HHMI associate in May 1990 and was later promoted to Research Assistant Professor. In 1999, he became a Professor in the Institute for Genome Research at the University of Tokushima.