University of Tokyo

Prof. Kiyohiko Igarashi is a Professor in wood chemistry at The University of Tokyo, Japan. He finished his postdoctoral research at Uppsala University, Sweden and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science consecutively after receiving his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from The University of Tokyo. Prof. Igarashi has been serving as the Vice Editor for the Journal of Applied Glycoscience since 2011. He is also a Visiting Fellow of the Technical Strategy Center, New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.

Prof. Satoh is currently a Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He completed his Ph.D. degree at the Department of Polymer Chemistry at Kyoto University before becoming an Assistant Professor and later an Associate Professor at Nagoya University. Prof. Satoh is highly decorated. He was entitled to the SPSJ Asahi Kasei Award, by the Society of Polymer Science, Japan in 2012 and the SPSJ Wiley Award in 2015. Prof. Satoh started at Tokyo Institute of Technology as a Professor in 2019. His group focus on new strategies for polymer synthesis, especially developing unprecedented precision polymerization reactions and creating environmentally-benign functional polymer materials from plant-derived monomers.  

Dr. Amasawa is a Project Associate Professor at RCAST, the University of Tokyo Komaba. With a Ph.D. in Sustainability Science from The University of Tokyo, her research involves life cycle environmental impact assessment of diverse products and services including emerging technologies and circular economy business models. Dr. Amasawa has numerous high-impact publications in reputable scientific journals. She was also a recipient of the 14th Award of the Institute of LCA Japan Young Researcher’s Award.

Dr. Hirokazu Kobayashi is an Associate Professor at Komaba Institute for Science, The University of Tokyo. He is currently a Committee Member of The Chemical Society of Japan Kanto Branch. Dr. Kobayashi received his Ph.D. in Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2009 and then became an Assistant Professor at the Catalysis Research Center at Hokkaido University until he moved back to Tokyo and started working as an Associate Professor at The University of Tokyo. In 2023 Dr. Kobayashi was recognized by the Royal Society of Chemistry as one of the ChemComm Pioneering Investigators. His group now has research interest in the catalysis for efficiently using and recycling natural resources.  

Dr. Takahashi is a Senior Researcher at The Nozaki Group at the Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. He is a dedicated young scientist who has published well in catalysis. After his Ph.D. Dr. Takahashi became a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Chemistry, Tokyo Institute of Technology. He then spent seven years as an Assistant Professor at the institute before rejoining The Nozaki Group at The University of Tokyo as an ERATO Chief Researcher. Now Dr. Takahashi is leading the team in the research of homogeneous catalyzed organic and polymer synthesis.

Dr. Suzuki is an Assistant Professor who joined the Center for Food Science and Wellness at Gunma University in 2021. Her distinction was highly recognized as she was one of the recipients of the 2022 International Congress on Pure & Applied Chemistry Kota Kinabalu (ICPAC KK) Lecture Awards. Her group now works on polymer biodegradation.

With a background in Chemical Physics, Dr. Kong is currently a Research Scientist in the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Biofunctional catalyst research team. Dr. Kong developed her scientific specialty in electrochemistry and electrochemical water splitting during her Ph.D. at the University of Chinese Academy of Science. Recently she published on Nature Catalysis about her latest research in acid-stable manganese oxides for proton exchange membrane water electrolysis.

Prof. Takanabe started his position as a Professor at the Department of Chemical System Engineering at the University of Tokyo in 2018. He was also the Editor of the Journal of Catalysis, Elsevier; a member of the Editorial Board of Molecular Catalysis, Elsevier; and a member of the International Advisory Board of ChemSusChem, Wiley. His group now focuses on the development of efficient catalysts for new energy conversion systems for sustainable development.  They work on sustainable hydrogen generation and utilization as well as carbon management and future energy supply.

Prof. Numata is a Professor at the Lab for Biomaterial Chemistry, the Chair in Polymer Material Chemistry at the Department of Material Chemistry at Kyoto University, Japan. He is highly regarded for his scientific achievement with numerous entitlements. At the same time, Prof. Numata also serves as the Team Leader of the Biomacromolecules Research Team at RIKEN and a Member of The Engineering Academy of Japan. Prof. Numata has also been contributing to peer review as an Associate Editor of ACS Biomaterial Sci & Eng. Currently his research group studies on design and synthesis of polypeptides for structural material engineering and plant engineering.

Audrey Moores is a Full Professor of Chemistry and associate director of the Facility for Electron Microscopy Research (FEMR) at McGill University. She is also a university-funded visiting professor at the University of Tokyo from January to June 2024. Her appointments also include President-elect of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada and co-chair of the 2024 Gordon Research Conference in Green Chemistry. In 2021 she received the Canadian Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award for Green Chemistry. With her group, she focuses on sustainable solutions for nanoparticles and biopolymer synthesis as well as catalyzed reactions, with an interest in waste biomass valorization, earth abundant starting materials and high atom economy.

Ryuhei Nakamura is the leader of the Biofunctional Catalyst Research Team at the  RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Wako, Saitama, Japan. He is also a Professor at the Earth Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Based on his achievements about electrocatalysis and deep-sea electrochemistry, he was awarded “The first Honda-Fujishima Prize (2005)”, “The First NAGASE Prize (special prize) (2011)” and “The Young Scientist’s Prize 2016″ Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in 2016. With his group, he is working on the development of biologically inspired catalysts and their application to energy conversion and production systems

Kyoko Nozaki graduated from Kyoto University, and received her Ph.D. from the same university in 1991. Since 1991, she has been a faculty member at Kyoto University, moved to The University of Tokyo in 2002, and had been Professor since 2003. Her research interests include the development of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for organic and polymer synthesis/degradation targeted on effective use of unutilized carbon resources, especially focusing on deep mechanistic understandings. She has been leading ERATO “NOZAKI Resin-Degradation Catalyst Project” of JST since 2021.

Tsuguyuki Saito is a professor of the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Science at the University of Tokyo and the lead of the Laboratory for Bionanomaterials and Cellulose Science. He is a world leader in the study of cellulose nanofiber (CNF), which can be made simply from wood and has excellent mechanical and thermal properties. With his group, he aims to deepen the understanding of the structure of CNF and establish a technology system that precisely controls the high-order hierarchical structure of materials that use CNF as an element. He has received the 2018 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Prize and the 2015 Marcus Wallenberg Prize.