National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

Dr. Akihiro Ishiwata earned his doctoral degree in Chemistry (1997) from Tohoku University (under the supervision of Professor Masahiro Hirama). After three years postdoctoral training at Sagami Chemical Research Center (Advisor, Dr. Shiro Terashima) and at Department of Chemistry and Institute of Drug Design, Wayne State University (Advisor, Professor Shahriar Mobashery), he moved to RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research) as a researcher in Synthetic cellular chemistry laboratory in 2001 under the direction of Dr. Yukishige Ito. Now he is a senior researcher at RIKEN in the same laboratory. He has been also working as a lecturer (part time) in Shibaura Institute of Technology from 2009 and Tokyo University of Science from 2018.

Dr. Katsuhiko Ariga received his PhD degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1990. After working as an assistant professor in the Tokyo Institute of Technology, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas in Austin, a group leader of the JST Supermolecules project and the Aida Nanospace project, and an associate professor of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, he joined to the National Institute for Materials Science in 2004. He is currently the leader of the Supermolecules Group and principal investigator of the World Premier International Research Centre for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, NIMS. He is also appointed as a professor of The University of Tokyo. As activities in American Chemical Society, he is currently the editorial board member of Chemistry of Materials and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Dr. Shin Horiuchi is Chief Senior Researcher of Laboratory for Adhesion and Interfacial Phenomena in National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. He earned his bachelor and master degrees in polymer engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Then he took a position as a research scientist at National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research in 1994, which is a former organization of AIST. He received his Ph. D. (1997) in organic and polymer materials from Tokyo Institute of Technology. His main research interests are characterization and imaging of multi-phase structures and interfaces in polymer materials by energy-filtering TEM and STEM-EELS. His research is currently focused on adhesion and interfacial phenomena investigated by electron microscopy.

Dr. Yukishige Ito received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo (Pharmaceutical Sciences, 1977). He then moved to RIKEN where he has been building his carrier for almost 40 years, as Research Scientist, Senior Scientist and Chief Scientist. He is now Director and Chief Scientist at Synthetic Cellular Chemistry Laboratory, RIKEN. Dr. Ito has played important roles nationally and internationally, including President of International Carbohydrate Organization, (2010-2012), President of Japan Society for Carbohydrate Research (2013-2015), and Research Director of ERATO “Glycotrilogy” Project, led by Japan Science and Technology Agency (2009-2015). He also received numerous awards, such as Roy L. Whistler International Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry (2008), Takeda Award for International Achievement (2010), and Synthetic Organic Chemistry Award, Japan (2017).

Prof. Setsuko Komatsu is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Proteome Research. She is a Professor at the Department of Environmental and Food Sciences in the Fukui University of Technology. Her research focuses on the identification and analysis of proteins for gene discovery and elucidation of functions of useful genes and controlling plant morphogenesis by altering the function based on the elucidation of molecular mechanism for phytohormone signal transduction. She is trying to spread for the agriculture proteomics as a president of “Asia Oceania Agricultural Proteomics Organization”. She has also held the international symposium “Frontiers in Agricultural Proteome Research” every year, which has already been held ten times.