After completing his graduate studies in two years, Ooguri became a tenured faculty member of the University of Tokyo in 1986. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and was appointed an assistant professor at the University of Chicago before receiving his Ph.D. in 1989. After four years as an associate professor at Kyoto University, he returned to the United States in 1994 as a full professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2000, Ooguri moved to Caltech, where he is the inaugural holder of the Fred Kavli Chair. From 2010 to 2015, Ooguri served as the Deputy Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy (equivalent to a vice dean of physical sciences). He led the establishment of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics in 2014, and has since served as its Founding Director. Ooguri was a Founding Principal Investigator of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo, and served as its Director from 2018 to 2023. The University of Tokyo honored him with the title of University Professor in 2024. Ooguri was a General Member of the Aspen Center for Physics for twenty years, serving as the Scientific Secretary, a Trustee, and the President. He has been the Chair of the Board of Trustees since 2021. He was elected an Honorary Trustee for Life in 2023.

Ooguri has received the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from the Emperor of Japan, the Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics from the American Mathematical Society, the Simons Investigator Award from the Simons Foundation, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hamburg Prize and the Humboldt Research Award in Germany, the Benjamin Lee Distinguished Professorship in Korea, and the Nishina Memorial Prize and the Chunichi Cultural Award in Japan. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Mathematical Society. Ooguri's popular science books have sold over 300,000 copies in Japan, and one of them won the Kodansha Prize for Science Books. He also supervised a science movie, which was selected for the Best Educational Production Award from the International Planetarium Society and has been translated into six languages.

In these years, the jazz genre is undergoing yet another transformation, led by brave musicians who let expressions merge with inspiration from, among others, hip-hop and uptempo electronic music. One of the standard-bearers on the scene here at home is producer/musician Jesper (Akton) Koblauch, who on the album Entirely / Gradually has teamed up with the renowned drummer Terkel Nørgaard on a whirling, poetic journey through classic jazz, beat music and house. Entirely / Gradually is the result of a chance meeting in the Palmspree record store in Copenhagen, and three years of subsequent concentrated work in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Super Bad Disco & Pasteelo Records have been responsible for publishing the music, which has been in rotation on P8 Jazz. The album was named one of the "Best Danish Jazz Releases of 2023" by Niels Overgård from Jazznyt with the reasoning "It is original and insanely well organized. I can't name any other Danish records that remind me of this well-crafted meeting between instrumental hip hop and jazz .Is it one of the records of the year? YES!”. On the record, Halvcirkel participates with two string parts and Magnus Wiinblad on flute, saxophone and clarinet. Lars Fiil and Casper Nyvang Rask participate on Wurlitzer piano and electric bass respectively, and they will also be on stage at Science & Cocktails, when the quartet plays the music from Entirely / Gradually as well as new compositions live.

Photo by Rasmus Nyboe