Brunner Lecture

Prof. Tadafumi Adschiri graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1981. He obtained his doctorate in 1986 and subsequently became an assistant professor at the same university. In 1988, he moved to Tohoku University, where he began working on his current research topics, specifically "reactions in supercritical water." His research encompasses a wide range of fields, including chemical recovery from waste, organic synthesis, and the hydrothermal synthesis of metal oxide particles—an area in which he has been actively involved for more than 35 years.

As evidenced by the program for ISSF-ISHA2025, "reactions in supercritical fluids" has now become an established research area. Beyond academic pursuits, some of these new processes have also been commercialized. Prof. Adschiri is particularly well-known as the inventor of supercritical hydrothermal synthesis for nanoparticle synthesis.

Due to the excellence of his research, he became a member of the Japanese Academy of Sciences in 2012, being recognized as one of the top 120 academicians among 800,000 researchers across all fields in Japan. Notably, he is one of only six members in the category of chemistry. Throughout his career, he has received numerous prestigious awards from academic societies, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from ISHA in 2023. He has also been honored by the Japanese government with the 2010 Invention Award of Japan and the Minister's Award from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology three times. In 2019, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from the University of Bordeaux, and, notably in the same year, he received the Medal with Purple Ribbon for excellence in research from the Emperor of Japan.