Takuo Sugano received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1954, 1956, and 1959, respectively. He joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tokyo as a Lecturer in 1959 and the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Tokyo as an Associate Professor in 1960, and was promoted to a Professor in 1971.

While he was at the University of Tokyo, he took various offices such as the Director at the Center for Low Temperature Science and Technology, a Councilor and the Dean of the Engineering Faculty.

In 1992 he retired from the University of Tokyo because of age limit, honored to be a Professor Emeritus, and moved to Toyo University, where he was a Professor of electrical and electronic engineering, and took office as the Dean of the Engineering Faculty in 1993 and as the President of the university from 1994 through 2000.

Currently he is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Toyo University. He served concurrently as the Director of the Frontier Materials Research and the Team Leader of the Nano-Electronics Materials Research under the International Frontier Research Program at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research for 6 years since 1991 and is now serving as the Supervisor of the research project "Function Evolution of Materials and Devices based on Electron/Photon Related Phenomena" under the Core Research Program for Evolutional Science and Technology at the Japan Science and Technology Agency since 1998.

Furthermore he took office as a member of the Science Council of Japan for 3 years from 1991, as the President of the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 1987, the Chairman of the Administrative Board at the Tokyo University Press in 1987, and a member of the Board of Directors at the IEEE for 1999 and 2000.

He served on IEC as Chairman of Japan Subcommittee of TC 47.