Prof. Yamada is presently a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Engineering of the University of Hyogo in Japan. He is professor emeritus at Kyoto University, where he was director of the Ion Beam Engineering Experimental Laboratory. He earned his PhD degree in electrical engineering from Kyoto University and has held visiting scientist appointments at FOM Institute in Amsterdam, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and Northwestern University.

Yamada's principal areas of research interest over the past 40 years have spanned from fundamental physics to practical applications of materials processing by ion beams, with particular emphasis on very low-energy ion-solid interactions. He has been an active contributor to the development of both academic and industrial societies associated with materials processing by ion beams, plasmas and other techniques. He has served on the committees of international symposia of materials processing, including Ion Implantation Technology (IIT), Ion Beam Modification of Materials (IBMM) and others. In particular, he organized the 12th IIT conference and school in 1998 at Kyoto, Japan, which was a great success with more than 500 attendees and over 400 papers presented.

Yamada was the originator of the concept for processing of materials by gas cluster ion beams. Research and development on gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) technology started under his direction in 1988 at the Kyoto University Ion Beam Engineering Experimental Laboratory. By 1995, the Kyoto group had recognized the impracticality of using substantially greater gas flows in order to increase cluster ion beam currents to the levels required for production processes. No other groups or institutes in the world had yet paid attention to the concept of cluster ion beam equipment or to possible uses of gas cluster ions for surface processing.