He was a prolific researcher, publishing 15 books/chapters and over 330 refereed journal articles, including papers in the prestigious Physics Review Letters (PRL). He also served as an Associate editor of Physical Review Letters.
Dr. Hirose supervised over 30 MSc and PhD students and many Post-Doctoral Fellows and Research Associates/Assistants. Akira made pioneering theoretical and experimental contributions to the basic understanding of waves and instabilities in plasmas and their effects on diffusion, confinement and heating of plasmas. Akira was responsible for building the first Canadian tokamak STOR-1M in the early 1980s and soon its successor STOR-M. STOR-M is the only active tokamak in Canada today. In early 1990, research on a compact torus injector was initiated to develop a unique fueling technology to meet the needs of future large tokamak fusion reactors. In early 2000, his lab expanded its research to include plasma based material syntheses. Though STOR-M is small, its contribution to the fusion energy research has been remarkable and has drawn attention from the fusion research community. The IAEA joint experiments, with participation from many countries, were conducted on STOR-M in August 2015. The Saskatchewan tokamaks were used to demonstrate alternating current operation of a tokamak for the first time in early 1980s, an operation mode later tested on many tokamaks world-wide, including the then largest Joint European Tokamak, expanding from 20 kA to 1 MA, and on the HT-7 superconducting tokamak, from a few AC cycles to hundreds of cycles.