Kazunori Akiyama

I am an Associate Professor at the Institute of Sensors, Signals and Systems (ISSS) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. My research focuses on studying black holes at ultra-high angular resolutions using very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). I specialise in horizon-scale physics, active galactic nuclei, and the development of computational imaging algorithms for radio interferometry.

I have been a part of the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project since I joined its early phase in 2010 as the first Japanese student involved. As a co-founder and former co-leader of the EHT Collaboration (EHTC)’s Imaging Working Group (2017-2022), I oversaw the groundbreaking imaging efforts that led to the first-ever images of black holes. Apart from co-leading the EHT imaging team, I developed the imaging software package SMILI used to create those first images capturing supermassive black holes M87* and Sgr A*. 

My current roles in the EHT community include the EHT Deputy Project Scientist (2025-) within the EHT Collaboration’s management team and co-leading the Algorithm & Inference Working Group of the next generation EHT Collaboration (2022-). I lead the Haystack team and co-lead the entire Japanese team for the Black Hole Explorer mission (2023-), a US-led space VLBI mission concept developed to extend the EHT to space.

I was born in Japan. I earned my undergraduate degree in physics from Hokkaido University in 2010. I completed master’s and doctoral programs in astronomy at the University of Tokyo in 2012 and 2015, respectively, under the supervision of Mareki Honma. After my PhD program, I moved to the United States and joined MIT Haystack Observatory as an Oversea Postdoctoral Fellow of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science in 2015, and later became a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in 2017 and was promoted to Research Scientist at MIT in 2020. I served as a Research Scientist and Principal Investigator within the radio astronomy group at MIT until February 2026, before joining Heriot-Watt University.

The honours I received include the President Award from the University of Tokyo (2015), the Young Astronomer Award from the Astronomical Society of Japan (2020), the Young Scientists’ Prize from the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2020), 20 Under 40: Young Shapers of the Future (Science and Technology) by Encyclopedia Britannica (2021), Royal Society’s £4M Faraday Discovery Fellowship (2025), and the 2020 Breakthrough Prize for the Fundamental Physics as a co-recipient (2019).