After 36 years working for NTT and finally serving as an NTT Research Professor, Mr.Niwano retired NTT in 2025. He currently works as a specially appointed associate professor at the Institute of Science Tokyo, conducting research on social information platform (especially for medical), digital ID and secure environment.

He joined NTT in 1989, and since then he has consistently devoted himself to planning, research and development in distributed system architecture for messaging, agent, smart card, secure device, ubiquitous, social information platform and smart cities in this order in NTT laboratories.

During this period, from 2002 to 2005 Mr. Niwano was general manager of European Office of NTT laboratories which was located in Paris. From 2008 to 2017, he has headed up e-Government, smart card/secure device and smart cities in Research and Development Planning Department, one of corporate strategy department in NTT. He serveed as a Producer over NTT Group companies and a director in the department.

Globally he has devoted GlobalPlatform, international standardization body for smart card and secure environments, as a board of directors for 20 years (2005-2025) and the chair of Japan Task Force. He got KEKICHEFF AWARD in 2023 and now he became the first emeritus advisor. He was also a member of ISO/IEC SC17 (Smart Card).

In Europe, Mr.Niwano was the editor of eEurope/Smart Card Charter/TB7/WG4 (multi-application architecture), a member of CEN e-Authentication Workshop and CEN/TC224/WG 15 (European Citizen Card) .

On the other hand in Japan he served as the chair of some working groups, a board of directors until 2025 and has been a Fellow for 20 years for NICSS (Next generation Ic Card System Study group) .

He was also a member of some study groups on public ID card in Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and Mitaka City in Japan.

Mr.Niwano got Information and Communication Technology Award (Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Prize) in 2018.

He got B.S and M.S in mathmatics from Waseda University in 1987 and 1989 respectively in Japan.