| Career Summary |
1987: M.S. from Tokyo Institute of Technology
1990: Ph.D. from Tokyo Institute of Technology
1987-1992: Assistant professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology
1990-1992: Postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas at Austin.
1992-1997: Group leader of JST Supermolecules Project
1998-2001: Associate professor at Nara Institute of Science and Technology
2001-2003: Group leader of JST Aida Nanospace Project
2004-present: Group leader at National Institute for Materials Science (since 2007, MANA Principal Investigator)
2017: Professor at University of Tokyo
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| Educational Activities |
Graduate school: Special Lecture for Materials Science V
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| Research Activities |
Our research is based on organic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, and interfacial science. We freely synthesize functional molecules that are often assembled at appropriate interfaces. For example, synthesized molecular machines are aligned as thin films on water surface and then operated by the hand-like motion of film compression and expansion to catch and release a target molecule. Such molecular machines and insect-like supramolecular assemblies are also applied to highly sensitive mechanical sensors. We have achieved the highly sensitive detection of environmentally toxic gasses and the super-bio discrimination of amino acids and nucleic acid bases. We aim to create functional molecular systems that have never been attempted before.
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Literature
See: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/H-2695-2011
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| Other Activities |
Editor-in-Chief of Bulletin of Chemical Society of Japan
International Advisory Board of Angewandte Chemie International Edition
International Advisory Board of Chemistry ? An Asian Journal
International Advisory Board of ChemNanoMat
Editorial Board Member of Advanced Materials
Editorial Board Member of Chemistry of Materials
Editorial Board Member of Langmuir (till 2014)
Editorial Board Member of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Editorial Board Member of Appl. Mater. Today
Editorial Board Member of Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials
Editorial Board Member of Green Energy Environ.
Editorial Board Member of Molecular Catalysis
Executive Board Member of Small Methods
Advisory Editor of Japanese Journal of Applied Physics
Advisory Editor of Applied Physics Express
Advisory Board Member of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Advisory Panel of Nanotechnology (till 2018)
Associate Editor of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (till2016)
Associate Editor of Science and Technology of Advanced Materials
Associate Editor of Journal of Oleo Science
Section Editor of Chemistry Letters (till 2016)
Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry
Highly Cited Researcher (Thompson Reuter): One of the worldfs most influential researchers
Honorary Member of Materials Research Society of India (MRSI)
Member of World Economic Forum Expert Network
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| Future Plan |
I want to be different from others, be a little strange, be in the minority, behave unexpectedly, and work hard like a superhuman (however, I probably cannot be a smart professor). Last year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for work on molecular machines that are operated on the basis of sophisticated molecular designs and are currently the top-level nanotechnology. However, we are trying to operate molecular machines by hand so that everyone can use them. Crazy ideas, such as catch and release of a molecule by hand, and nucleic acid base discrimination much better than DNA by hand, can be done with our special interfacial technique.
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| Messages to Students |
You do not have to be better than your friends, but you must be different from the others.
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