Professor Akiyama, a gerontologist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo and the former vice president of Science Council of Japan. Professor Akiyama has conducted a number of cross-national surveys and is widely recognised as an expert on issues of global ageing.

She is known for the long-running research on older people in Japan—tracking the ageing patterns of approximately 6,000 Japanese older people for 30 years.

She also initiated social experiment projects that pioneer to re-design communities to meet the needs of the highly aged society, and, more recently the Kamakura Living Lab, a platform for open innovation by co-creation among users, industry, government and academia. She formed the Institute of Gerontology, an interdisciplinary gerontology program at the University of Tokyo in 2006. Professor Akiyama received her PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, the United States.