Biographical
Sketch
Professor Masaharu
Komiyama
Graduate School of Medicine and Engineering
Yamanashi University
Professor
Komiyama, born in Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka, Japan,
on June 30, 1951, has been working in the field of catalysis ever since his
graduate education at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. There he started
working on catalyst preparation studies, which he continued on when he was
enrolled in the graduate schools at the University of California - Berkeley
where he obtained his M.S. degree and at Cornell University where he earned his
Ph.D. degree. His graduate work was later fruited in a review, "Design and
Preparation of Impregnated Catalysts," published in Catalysis Reviews -
Science and Engineering, 27 (1985) 341-372, as well as in a chapter in a book
"Handbook of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 4: Advances in Reactor Design
and Combustion Sciences" published by Gulf Publishers, New York, in 1990.
When he returned to Japan in 1980, he was appointed a Research Associate in the
Department of Chemical Engineering, Tohoku University. There he developed an
interest in catalyst characterization, and introduced new techniques to the
field, including high-pressure in situ IR, XPS and Auger in combination with
ion- bombardment, and among all, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic
force microscopy (AFM). His work during this period earned him the "Young
Scientists Award" from the Japan Catalysis Society in 1991 for his
"Study of Catalyst Characterization Techniques on Supported Metal
Catalysts".
Moved to Yamanashi University in 1990, he was first appointed Associate
Professor in Chemistry, then Professor at the Institute of Inorganic Synthesis.
He continued to work on the application of scanning probe microscopy (STM and
AFM) to catalysis studies. His recent work includes the observation of atoms
and molecules liquid-phase adsorbed on zeolite
surfaces. This work attracted much attention, resulting in a number of invited
lectures in domestic as well as in international conferences, including
"The 7th International Conference on Molecular Electronics and Biocomputing" (Nanjing, November, 1997), "Bouyoucos Conference on Environmental Chemistry at the
Clay-Water Interface (Honolulu, March, 2000), and "The 8th International
Colloquium on Scanning Probe Microscopy and Asian SPM (3) (Atagawa,
December, 2000).
In April, 2001, he move to the Institute for Molecular
Sciences, Okazaki National Research Institutes, where he served as a professor
of the Division of Interface Molecular Science in the Molecular-scale Nanoscience Center. During the two-year appointment there,
he conducted a study of photocatalysts at atomic
scale using scanning tunneling microscopy, and also sponsored and chaired two colloquims, "New Developments in Molecular Science
Study using Scanning Probe Microscopy" and "Nanomechanics
of Atoms and Molecules." Moved back
to Yamanashi University in April, 2003, he now serves as a professor at the
Graduate School of Medicine and Engineering, and continues to work in the field
of catalysis, including the developments of steam reforming catalysts for fuel
cell applications and supercritical water-catalytic conversion of biomass.
His recent appointments include: Visiting
Professor, Hunan Normal University (2001-2004), Associate Editor, Chemistry
Letters, The Chemical Society of Japan (2003- 2005), Editorial Board Member,
e-Journal of Surface Science and Nanotechnology, The Surface Science Society of
Japan (2003 to present), Visiting Professor, Cornell University (2006-2007),
and Editor, Journal of Biomass and Renewables (2011
to present).