Shigehiro Kuraku is a natural scientist working in the interface of molecular phylogenetics, developmental biology, and genome informatics, and is a chief developer of the online tools gVolante and aLeaves. He graduated from Kyoto University, Japan, where he completed his Ph.D. in 2005. After a 5-year assistant professorship in the University of Konstanz, Germany, he moved to Kobe, Japan in 2012 to supervise the DNA sequencing and genome analysis station in the RIKEN Kobe Campus. Now he works as Professor of Molecular Life History Laboratory at National Institute of Genetics in Mishima and as Team Leader of Laboratory for Phyloinformatics in RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Kobe.