Quick Facts
Biography
Emma Haruka Iwao is a Japanese computer scientist and cloud developer advocate at Google. In 2019 Haruka Iwao calculated the world's most accurate value of pi (π); which included 31.4 trillion digits, far past the previous record of 22 trillion.
Early life and education
As a child, Iwao became interested in pi. She was inspired by Japanese mathematicians, including Yasumasa Kanada. She studied computer science at the University of Tsukuba, where she was taught by Daisuke Takahashi. She was awarded the Dean's Award for Excellence in 2008, before starting graduate studies in computing. Her master's dissertation considered high performance computer systems. After graduating, Iwao took on several software engineering positions, working on site reliability for Panasonic, GREE and Red Hat.
Career
Iwao joined Google as a Cloud Developer Advocate in 2015. She originally worked for Google in Tokyo, before moving to Seattle in 2019. Iwao offers training in the use of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), as well as supporting application developers. She works to make cloud computing accessible for everyone, creating online demos and teaching materials.
In March 2019 Iwao calculated the value of pi to 31.4 trillion digits, using 170 Terabytes (TB) of data. The calculation used a multithreaded program called y-cruncher using over 25 machines for 121 days.