Dr. Masataka Kuwana is a professor and chairman of Allergy and Rheumatology at Nippon Medical School, and a director of Scleroderma/Myositis Center of Excellence at Nippon Medical School Hospital in Tokyo, Japan. He was trained at Keio University and joined the Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, as a postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Kuwana has spent his professional career focusing on basic and clinical aspects of systemic sclerosis, myositis, and a variety of systemic and organ-specific autoimmune diseases. He has published more than 590 peer-reviewed scientific articles and written more than 12 book chapters. He serves as Editor-in-chief of Journal of Scleroderma and Related Disorder and Modern Rheumatology. His main research interests include autoantibodies, systemic sclerosis, idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, and pulmonary complications of connective tissue diseases.