Masataka Nakazawa joined NTT Laboratories in 1980, after receiving his Ph.D. from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He was a visiting scientist at MIT in 1984. In 2001, he was appointed professor at Tohoku University, where he became the director of the Research Institute of Electrical Communication. He has also been the president of the Electronics Society of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) and an OSA board member. He is a Fellow of OSA, IEEE, IEICE and JSAP. In 2014, he received OSA’s Charles Hard Townes Medal “for seminal contributions to the ultrafast science and applications of ultrafast optics and ultrastable narrow-linewidth laser.” Previously, he received the R.W. Wood Prize “for invention of the 1.48 μm InGaAsP laser-diode-pumped erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EFDA) and the development of its application to high-speed optical communications and short pulse lasers.”