Shizuka Hirai, Ph.D., was born in Kyoto, Japan. She got her Ph.D. degree in Animal Nutritional Sciences, Agriculture, at Kyoto University. Following careers as a postdoctoral fellow at Kyoto University, she started working for Faculty of Horticulture, Chiba University in 2009. Her specialties are molecular nutrition and food functions. Her research interests are to understand the mechanisms of pathogenesis of life style diseases, especially obesity and metabolic syndromes, and to find out the functional foods to protect or regulate such diseases. She is a member of "Japanese Society of Nutrition and Food Science" and "Japan Society for the Study of Obesity".