The husband in this team is a research fellow at the NEC Fundamental Research Laboratories, Tsukuba. He is also head of the Riken Macroscopic Quantum Coherence Laboratory, Wako. He keeps the title of professor from his guest positions at institutes and universities, which include the University of Tokyo. He is a leader and member of distinguished professional program, research and steering committees. He is an honorary fellow of the American Physical Society.
The wife in this team is an interior designer whose strengths lie in her Japanese heritage, her New York experiences and the Chinese influences she has received from her husband and his family. She is also the inheritor of a company that cares for her own family's old properties, "lots of them," in Gunma. Her instinctive interests, she says, are in traditional Japanese aesthetics and lifestyles.
Together, Jaw-Shen and Yoshiko Tsai make a modern couple, up to the minute, able and achieving. He was born in Taipei, where his father was a politician associated with the National Chinese government. She was born in a 250-year-old house in Gunma, which they have made into their retreat, and where they go with their dogs from Tokyo at weekends.