Kazuaki Sakoda completed his BE, ME, and PhD degrees at the University of Tokyo. After working as an Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, he joined the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan. He was the Director of the Quantum Dot Research Center and Photonic Materials Unit, while also serving as a Professor at the Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Tsukuba. He served as a Program Officer in the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and as a Director in the Physical Society of Japan. He was also the Head Investigator of the research project “Electromagnetic Metamaterials” organized by MEXT, Japan. His main research area is the optical properties of matter. He has been engaged in the theoretical study of photonic crystals and metamaterials for many years, and has published more than 200 research papers and three books, including Optical Properties of Photonic Crystals (Springer, 2004).