Hirokazu Handa is a unit leader of the plant genome research unit at the Institute of Crop Science, NARO in Japan. He did a PhD in Plant Genetics at the Kyoto University, Japan under the supervision of Professor Tsunewaki, a prominent wheat geneticist. He has been involved in molecular genetic analyses of wheat and Brassica species since almost two decades in the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Japan, and then due to his background and interest he joined the work for the analysis of the wheat genome structure as a leader of the wheat genome sequencing team in Japan at the beginning of 2012.

In the post sequence era, he is interested in the polyploidization process and the diversity of wheat and its relatives from the point of genomics view, and he has also an interest in the genomic structures of the Japanese wheat varieties, which are grown in a unique environment, highly humid and relatively warm. Besides basic research, the translational work for wheat breeding is in his perspective, too.