Taka Hirata is currently an assistant professor at Faculty of Environmental Earth Sciences, Hokkaido University, Japan. He obtained his PhD (in Physics) in 2003 from Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. After obtaining his PhD, he worked as a bio-optical modeller at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK as a post-doctoral researcher. After he worked in the field of the bio-optics and ocean colour remote sensing for 6 years, he moved to Hokkaido University in Japan and started marine ecological model. He is currently a principal investigator of Global Climate Observation Mission run by JAXA (Japanese space agency), and a collaborator of Climate Change Initiative run by ESA (European space agency).