Speaker

Reiko KURODA

Professor - Tokyo University of Science

Reiko Kuroda is currently professor at the Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Science and Technology at the Tokyo University of Science.

In 1975, she earned her PhD at the University of Tokyo, with a thesis on “The stereochemistry of chiral transition metal complexes”. Later she continued her studies at the Chemistry Institute of King’s College in London and focused her research on the examination of chirality within biochemistry. She eventually became a research fellow, and later honorary lecturer, at the Department of Biophysics of King’s College.

In 1986, she returned to Japan, where she was appointed as the first female associate professor and later full professor of her former university at the Department of Life Sciences. In addition to research, she also considers it important to improve the relationship between society and science, and has therefore promoted the creation of Science Interpreter Training Program at the University of Tokyo.

She has received numerous prestigious awards, such as the Saruhashi Prize, the Nissan Science Prize, the Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize, the Molecular Chirality Award, and L’Oreal-UNESCO Women For Science Award in 2013. She has received a number of governmental and international appointments, for example she is a member of the Japan Scientific Council, the UNESCO Japan National Committee, the Scientific Advisory Board to the UN secretary general, moreover, she was Vice-President of the ICSU between 2008 and 2011, and also she is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

(© Molecular Frontiers 2017)