Program | Asian Science Camp 2013

Leaders

The following top scholars participate in ASC 2013 as Leaders and provide a stimulating program to attract all the participants, including plenary sessions, parallel discussion sessions among Leaders and students, poster presentations, a social party and excursions. The working language is English.

Leaders
Leo Esaki	Nobel Laureate in Physics 1973
Makoto Kobayashi	Nobel Laureate in Physics 2008
Motoko Kotani	Director, Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University
Yuan T. Lee	Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1986
Hitoshi Murayama	Director, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, the University of Tokyo
Ei-ichi Negishi	Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2010
Ada E. Yonath	Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2009

Leaders Introduction

Leo Esaki

Nobel Laureate in Physics 1973

Leo Esaki was born on March 12, 1925 in Osaka, Japan. Studying physics at the University of Tokyo, he received his B.Sc. in 1947 and his Ph.D. in 1959. Esaki was awarded the Nobel Prize for research he had conducted around 1957 regarding electron tunneling in solids.
He moved to the United States in 1960 and joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he became an IBM Fellow in 1967 and stayed until he returned to Japan in 1992. He and his coworkers pioneered semiconductor superlattices, opening up a new frontier in the field of semiconductors when he was with IBM. After returning to Japan, he has served as the President of various Japanese universities, such as University of Tsukuba and Shibaura Institute of Technology, currently Yokohama College of Pharmacy as well as The Science and Technology Promotion Foundation of Ibaraki.
He is the recipient of The Order of Culture, Japanese Government 1974, The American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials 1985, IEEE Medal of Honor 1991, and Japan Prize 1998.

Makoto Kobayashi

Nobel Laureate in Physics 2008

Makoto Kobayashi was educated at Nagoya University, and received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1972.
He and Toshihide Maskawa proposed the so-called Kobayashi-Maskawa model in 1973, when they were both in Kyoto University.
He moved to KEK in 1979, and was the Director of KEK's Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies (2003-2006).
The B-factory experiments at KEK and SLAC have proven that their model describes CP-symmetry breaking of elementary particles correctly.
He has been awarded numbers of prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Physics 2008.
He is Acting Chairman of Asian Science Camp Advisory Committee.

Motoko Kotani

Director, Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University

Motoko Kotani received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1990.
She has been a professor at Tohoku University since 2004.
She is also the Director of the brand-new Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR) at Tohoku University, funded under the World Premier International Research Center Initiative by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.
She is a pioneer in the research on Discrete Geometric Analysis, one of the new frontiers in Geometry of mathematics. She is promoting the collaboration between mathematicians and materials scientists to develop new and innovative materials.
She was awarded in 2005 the Saruhashi Prize, given yearly to a female scientist who serves as a role model for younger female scientists.

Yuan T. Lee

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1986

Yuan T. Lee received his M.S. from Tsing Hua University in 1961 and his Doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1965.
He went to Harvard as a post-doctoral fellow in 1967.
He then took faculty appointments at the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley, and became University Professor and Principal Investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, UC Berkeley, before taking over the position of the President of Academia Sinica (1994-2006).
He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1986 with Prof. Dudley Herschbach and Prof. John C. Polanyi for their work in the field of reaction dynamics.
He is a Co-Funder of Asian Science Camp.

Hitoshi Murayama

Director, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, the University of Tokyo

Hitoshi Murayama received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from University of Tokyo in 1991. He worked as a Research Associate at Tohoku University from April 1991, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from September 1993. He joined the Physics Department at UC Berkeley in July 1995, became an Associate Professor in July 1998, and Professor in July 2000. Professor Murayama is also the Director of the brand new Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) at University of Tokyo, as of 2013. He received Yukawa Commemoration Prize in Theoretical Physics in 2002.He is a Fellow of American Physical Society and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is well-known for his clear lectures for students and general audience.

Ei-ichi Negishi

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2010

Ei-ichi Negishi went to the US in 1960 after graduating from the University of Tokyo, and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963.
He has been a researcher at Purdue University for more than thirty years;
he is currently Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Teijin Limited Director of the Negishi-Brown Institute.
He is a pioneer in developing metal-based reactions called palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling, which allow for easy and efficient synthesis of complex organic compounds.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2010, jointly with Richard F. Heck and Akira Suzuki, for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.

Ada E. Yonath

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2009

Ada Yonath, graduated the Hebrew University, earned Ph.D. from Weizmann Institute (WIS) and postdoced at Mellon Institute and MIT. In the seventies she established the first laboratory for protein crystallography in Israel, the only laboratory of this kind in the country for almost a decade. Since the eighties she is WIS Kimmel Professor and the Director of Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly. In parallel, during 1986-2004 she headed the Max-Planck-Research-Unit for Ribosome Structure in Hamburg, Germany.
She is a member of several academies, including US National Academy; Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities; Korean Academy for Science & Technology; European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). She holds honorary doctorates from almost all Israeli Universities; KEK, Japan; Oslo U; NYU and Mount Sinai Universities; Hamburg University; Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
Her awards include the Israel Prize; the Paul Karrer Gold Medal; Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize; Paul Ehrlich-Ludwig Medal; Linus Pauling Gold Medal; Anfinsen Prize; Wolf Prize; Massry Award; UNESCO/L’Oreal Award for Women in Science; Albert Einstein World Award for Excellence; Erice Peace Prize; Indian PM Gold medal; President of Panama Award; Maria Sklodowska-Curie Medal; Cite of Florence Prize; Datta Medal; The Nobel Prize for Chemistry.