Yu Hirata graduated from Tokyo University (BS, Mechanical Engineering), and came to DEALL after earning an MA in Asian Studies (1996) at the University of Sydney.  As a DEALL GTA he taught Japanese language on all levels, and concentrated in language pedagogy and linguistics.  His 2001 dissertation on the evolution of early genitive markers in Japanese (advisor Charles Quinn; James Unger; Brian Joseph) was supported with a Presidential Fellowship.  After teaching Japanese as a second language at Kansai Gaidai University, Hirata moved to Ritsumeikan University, where, as professor in the Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science, he is conducting the brain-imaging research reported in Impact (https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sil/impact/2021/00002021/00000002/art00026).