Masayuki Kobayashi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rurio Inc., a company working with town development and energy system design for rural regions in Japan. Originally from Yamagata Prefecture in Tohoku, his interest in regional revitalisation began after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami deeply affected the region he grew up in.
Masayuki holds a BEng in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Tohoku University and an MSc in Sustainable Energy Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His master’s thesis focused on the design and optimisation of a resilient distributed energy system for Odaka, Japan, connecting his technical expertise directly to the local context of this Bootcamp.
In 2021, he co-founded Rurio Inc. together with Trishit Banerjee and Swastika Harsh Jajoo. Through Rurio, he works at the intersection of energy technology, rural development, and regional revitalisation, including recent research on resilient power systems and business models designed to create economic and social benefits for the Odaka district. He has also spoken publicly about depopulation in Japanese rural areas, including in his TEDxWasedaU talk, “Towns are disappearing in Japan. What can we do?”
