Aya Nakae received the Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree in medicine in 2008, both from Osaka University, Japan. Her Ph.D. research focused on advancing anesthesiology and pain medicine.She is currently a Principal Researcher at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan. She has previously held academic positions, including Specially Appointed Professor at Osaka University and Visiting Professor at the Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet). Her research explores the use of objective assessments in clinical settings, integrating robotic technologies and neuroscience to develop innovative pain evaluation methods. Her research interests include anesthesiology, pain medicine, neuroscience, and brain science.Dr. Nakae is a member of the Japanese Association for the Study of Pain (JASP), where she serves as a board member and representative director of the Digital Health Science division. She is also a member of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and is active in various professional societies, including the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists. She has received numerous honors, including the International Federation of Associations of Pharmaceutical Physicians Fellowship and several prestigious awards for her research contributions. Additionally, she holds ten patents related to her work in pain medicine and neuroscience.

Hani M. BU-OMER received BSc. and MSc. degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Systems from the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt in 2011 and 2017. He obtained Ph.D. degree in neuroscience from Okayama University, Japan, in 2021. His Ph.D. research focused on studying brain activities associated with the sense of agency using EEG.He is a Research Scientist at ATR, Kyoto, Japan. He previously held research positions, including Specially Appointed Researcher at Osaka University, Japan. His work focuses on the physiological, endocrinological, and personality bases of pain expression, the effects of robotic-mediated communication on pain perception, and EEG-based pain prediction systems. His research interests include neural signal processing, EEG-based pain prediction, socio-economic and physiological correlates of pain, and the application of AI in health systems.Dr. Bu-Omer is cofounder of Hadhramout Foundation for Invention and Advancement of Science (HFIAS), Yemen. He is a member of the Japanese Association for the Study of Pain (JASP), IEEE, IEEE EMBS, and other professional societies. He has received numerous honors, including the CiNet Research Award in 2022 and scholarships from the Japan Government (MEXT) and Yemen’s Ministry of Higher Education.

Chie Kishimoto received the Bachelor’s degree in agriculture from the Department of Livestock Civil Engineering, School of Veterinary and Livestock Sciences, Kitasato University, Japan, in 2001.From 2003, she worked as a technical staff member at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, where she contributed to risk management and evaluation tools for radioactive contamination, detailed risk assessments for chemical substances, chemical screening and risk evaluation, and ecotoxicity database analysis. In 2017, she joined PRIN Corporation (now PaMeLa Inc., Japan) as a researcher and held positions as a Specially Appointed Researcher at Osaka University. She became a Specially Appointed Researcher at the Global Center for Medical Engineering and Informatics, Osaka University, in 2022. Since April 2024, she has been a Research Technician at ATR, Kyoto, Japan, supporting research activities and conducting data acquisition and analysis. Mrs. Kishimoto is a member of the Japanese Association for the Study of Pain (JASP) and the Japanese Association for the Study of Musculoskeletal Pain. She serves as a secretary for the Digital Health Science division of JASP and the Anesthesia Mechanism Research Group.

Wei-Chuan Chang received the B.A. degree in social science from Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA, in 1984, the B.S. degree in biology from Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA, in 1989, and the M.S. degree in microbiology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA, in 1991. She earned the Ph.D. degree in microbiology, specializing in immunology, from the same university in 2002. She was a Researcher at MedGEL Corporation, Japan, from 2006 to 2008, and held a dual appointment as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA, from 2008 to 2012. From 2016 to 2017, she was a Technical Assistant at the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Japan, and served as a Specially Appointed Technical Staff at the same institution from 2019 to 2023. Since 2023, she has been a Research Technologist at ATR), Kyoto, Japan. Her work focuses on wet lab techniques, including ELISA for hormone detection in blood, and molecular biology methods. Dr. Chang is actively engaged in research involving hormone measurement and molecular biology techniques. She has recently contributed to studies on endocrinological responses to exercise and pain expression.

Hidenobu Sumioka received the B.Eng. degree in 2004, the M.Eng. degree in 2005, and the Ph.D. degrees in engineering in 2008, all from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. From April 2008, he was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS fellow, DC2). From April 2009, he was a researcher at Artificial intelligence Laboratory directed by Prof. Rolf Pfeifer. Since January 2012, he has been a researcher at Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). Currently, he is the leader of Presence Media Research Group in Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, ATR. His research interests include human-robot touch interaction, application of a social robot to elderly care, influence of social robot in brain activity, and information theory.