Dr. Akihiko Hirose is a Director of Division of Risk Assessment at National Institute of Health Sciences, Japan. He received a Ph.D. in physiological medicine from Tohoku University in 1990, and was certified as a Diplomate of the Japanese Society of Toxicology in 2000. He is an expert in risk assessment of industrial chemicals, contaminants in drinking water and food. He is mainly working on the chemical risk assessment of industrial chemicals as an expert member for the committee under the Japanese Chemical Substance Law, and under the meeting of the OECD Cooperative Chemical Assessment Program (CoCAM). He is an expert member of the Expert Committee of Chemicals and Contaminants, Food Safety Commission, Japan. He is also a member of the committee for the rolling revision of drinking water quality standards in Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare. His current emerging research themes are some researches on the development of QSAR system and TTC (Threshold of Toxicological Concern) concept based assessment methodology for chemical impurities risk assessment, and a research on the methodology for evaluating health effects of manufactured nanomaterials. As for the fields on the drug quality controls, he has been involved in the ICH guidelines for Q3D (elemental impurities) and Q3C (residual solvents), and has acted as a topic leader of Japanese government side.