Kazutoshi Mori was born in 1958 in Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan and is currently Professor of Biophysics in the Graduate School of Science at Kyoto University. He graduated from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Kyoto University in 1981, obtained his PhD there and was appointed Assistant Professor at Gifu Pharmaceutical University in 1985. 

From 1989 to 1993, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Texas. He was Research Manager at the HSP (Heat Shock Protein) Research Institute in Kyoto from 1993 to 1998, and has been a member of the faculty of Kyoto University since 1999.He received Lasker Award in 2014 for discoveries concerning the unfolded protein response — an intracellular quality control system that detects harmful misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum and signals the nucleus to carry out corrective measures.