Akiba is based in Japan and active in the international hardware hacker community. He specializes in product design and manufacturing and teaches what is involved with navigating the factory ecosystem of Shenzhen. When not in Shenzhen, he’s spending time at Hackerfarm, a hackerspace he and some friends founded in rural Japan specializing in agricultural and environmental technology. He runs his own company, FreakLabs, is a research affiliate with MIT Media Lab, and has also been a design consultant to the UN, International Atomic Energy Agency, Google, and various other organizations.