Takaaki Kajita is the Distinguished University Professor at The University of Tokyo, and also was the Director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research (ICRR) of The University of Tokyo between 2008 and 2022. He was the President of the Science Council of Japan between 2020 and 2023.Kajita received his Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo, School of Science in 1986. He has been researching at Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande detectors at the Kamioka Observatory in central Japan.

In 1998, at the Neutrino International Conference held in Takayama, Japan, he showed the analysis results which provided strong evidence for atmospheric neutrino oscillations. In 2015 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in discovering atmospheric neutrino oscillations. Currently, he is the PI of the KAGRA gravitational wave project.