Shintaro Sengoku joined McKinsey & Company, Inc. Japan in 2001, providing management consulting to pharmaceutical and healthcare companies in Japan and overseas. His work covered a wide range of management issues, including company-wide strategy, R&D strategy, business and product strategy, operational enhancement, and M&A support. In 2005, he became a lecturer in the Pharmaco-Business Innovation unit at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, where he taught and conducted research in management of technology and social pharmacy.

In January 2008, he became an Associate Professor in an endowed research division at Kyoto University’s center for industry–government–academia collaboration. From April 2009, he served as an Associate Professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (WPI-iCeMS) and as the principal investigator of its Innovation Management Group. In September 2014, he became an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Innovation Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since April 2021, he has served as a Professor at the university’s School of Environment and Society.

His other past roles include serving as a part-time lecturer at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Biostudies and the University of Tokyo Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and as a director of the nonprofit organization Kyoto SMI.

Shintaro graduated from the Department of Biochemistry in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo and completed the doctoral program at its Graduate School of Science, earning a PhD in Science.