Yasuo Cho graduated in 1980 from Tohoku University in electrical engineering department. In 1985 he became a research associate at Research Institute of Electrical Communication Tohoku University. In 1990, he received an associate professorship from Yamaguchi University. He then became an associate professor in 1997 and a full professor in 2001 at Research Institute of Electrical Communication Tohoku University. During this time, his main research interests included nonlinear phenomena in ferroelectric materials and their applications, research on the scanning nonlinear dielectric microscopy (SNDM), and research on using the SNDM in next-generation ultrahigh density ferroelectric data storage (SNDM ferroelectric probe memory).