A blind female engineer will become the new director of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Tokyo next spring, the Japan Science and Technology Agency announced Monday.
Chieko Asakawa, 61, who is now a fellow at U.S. technology giant IBM Corp., will assume the post on April 1 next year, taking over for former astronaut Mamoru Mohri, 72, the first director of the museum.
Mohri, who has served as director for about 20 years, will become an honorary director of the museum.
In 2009, Asakawa became the first Japanese woman to be honored with an IBM Fellow appointment, the highest position held by IBM engineers. She has been working at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York State since 2006.
Asakawa lost her sight due to an injury in her second year of junior high school. After graduating from university, she studied computer programming technology and joined Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Japan, in 1985, where she led the development of technology to assist the visually impaired, such as speechreading software.
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