Hirohito Yamada received his B.E. degree in electronics engineering from Kanazawa University, Japan in 1981, and his M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from Tohoku University, Japan in 1983 and 1987, respectively. In 1987, he joined NEC Corporation, where he conducted research on semiconductor lasers and Si nano-photonic devices for optical fiber communication systems. In 2006, he became a professor at Tohoku University, where he has been dedicated to teaching communication engineering and researching photonic integrated devices. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, he expanded his research to include solar power generation and DC microgrids. He even built an off-grid house and has lived without purchasing electricity from the utility company for over eight years. Although he retired from Tohoku University in March 2024, he still continues his research on autonomous decentralized cooperative controlled microgrids at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University, from April onwards.