Akira SAKAMOTO was born in 1963 in Tokyo, Japan.  He obtained a B. A. from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo in 1986, and a M. A. in Sociology from the Graduate School of Sociology at the University of Tokyo in 1988.  After then, he worked as a lecturer in the University of Tokyo for one year, and subsequently re-entered the graduate school, in which he had obtained the M. A., in 1989.  In 1991, he became an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, Ochanomizu University, a national women's university in Tokyo.  In 1992, he was awarded a Ph D. in Sociology from the University of Tokyo, and in 1993, he became an associate professor at Ochanomizu University. 

His research fields are social psychology and educational technology, and he has published some books and over seventy refereed articles on social cognition and media issues, some of which are found in international journals such as Journal of Applied Social Psychology, International Journal of Behavioral Development, Simulation & Gaming, and Asian Journal of Social Psychology.  He recently edited a book entitled “The psychology of the Internet: Its usage for education, therapy, and meeting.”  He has won awards from six academic associations, for example, Japanese Psychological Association, Japanese Society of Social Psychology, and Japanese Association of Educational Technology. 

He is a vice-president of Japanese Association of Simulation and Gaming, and a steeling committee member of Japanese Society of Personality Psychology. He is also an editor in chief of Studies in Simulation and Gaming, and an editorial board member of six academic journals such as Asian Journal of Social Psychology and Japanese Journal of Developmental Psychology.  He sometimes works as a committee member of the Japanese government, and he is also a director of Computer Entertainment Rating Organization, a Japanese non-profit organization for video game rating.