Dr. Koki Muraoka, Department of Chemical System Engineering, received “JSPS Ikushi Prize”

On 6th February 2019 (Award ceremony 9th March 2019), Dr. Koki Muraoka, Department of Chemical System Engineering, received “JSPS Ikushi Prize”.

In 2009, JSPS received an endowment from Emperor Akihito on the 20th year of his reign. Amidst a severe economic environment in Japanese society, His Majesty’s desire was to encourage and support young scientists who are working diligently to advance their studies and research. In deference to his wishes, JSPS established the Ikushi Prize program and placed it into operation in FY 2010. It functions to formally recognize outstanding doctoral students who can be expected to contribute to Japan’s future scientific advancement.
(Quoted from https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-ikushi-prize/outline.html)

<About awarded research>

Development of highly tuned materials requires intensive synthetic experiments to control the atomic arrangement of the materials.
Computational chemistry and machine learning techniques—collectively called "materials informatics" in recent years—are sometimes effective to cope with the thousands of trial-and-error.
This study employed zeolites as model materials to rationalize the synthesis by the computer-assisted development of materials.
Zeolites with specific atomic locations and chemical composition were successfully crystallized by the computer-guided experiments.

<Comments>

I would like to thank Prof. Tatsuya Okubo and Dr. Watcharop Chaikittisilp, my supervisors who gave me tremendous opportunities to pursue a challenging research theme and discuss it with world-leading researchers.
I also would like to thank members in the Department of Chemical System Engineering and Global Leader Program for Social Design and Management, especially Prof. Masaru Yarime for motivating me to conduct interdisciplinary research.
I will make these methods as a platform to accelerate the research and development of materials.

JSPS Ikushi Prize : https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-ikushi-prize/data/awards/9th_Ikushi_list_en.pdf