Gratitude to the University of Tokyo faculty.

As the 31st President and a working microfluidics engineer, Teruo Fujii steers one of the world's great public universities while never losing the researcher's respect for careful, hands-on science.

A former Reuters correspondent turned scholar, Kaori Hayashi brings a journalist's clarity and a deep commitment to diversity and gender justice to both her research and her leadership of the university.

From the discovery of the top quark to CP violation and the Belle II experiment, Hiroaki Aihara has spent a career at the frontier of particle physics, and now helps guide the whole university with that same rigor.

One of the most cited virologists alive, Yoshihiro Kawaoka studies how flu and Ebola cross between species so that humanity can be readier for the next pandemic before it arrives.

Takaaki Kajita's discovery of neutrino oscillation won the 2015 Nobel Prize and proved neutrinos have mass, yet he still speaks of patient, unhurried science as the real gift he wants to pass on.

Masahiro Takada uses the Subaru Telescope to weigh dark matter and chase down dark energy, turning faint distortions in galaxy light into some of our sharpest measurements of the cosmos.

A world leader in understanding how oxygen starvation drives kidney disease, Masaomi Nangaku pairs patient-centered medicine with the quiet generosity of a dean who mentors the next generation of physicians.

Tetsuo Ushiku reads the hidden stories in tissue under the microscope, and his careful diagnostic pathology quietly underwrites the right treatment for countless patients he will never meet.

Through humanoid robots like JAXON and Kengoro, Masayuki Inaba has spent decades patiently teaching machines to move like us, building a robotics school of thought that shaped a whole generation of Japanese engineers.

As a tireless champion of deep learning in Japan and chair of the Japan Deep Learning Association, Yutaka Matsuo has opened the door of modern AI to thousands of students and startups.

Takao Someya invents electronics that bend, stretch, and rest gently on human skin, imagining a kinder technology that fits the body instead of forcing the body to fit it.

Makoto Fujita coaxes molecules into assembling themselves into beautiful cages and frameworks, a kind of chemistry so elegant it lets scientists simply see molecules that once defied observation.

Eiichi Nakamura found a way to film single molecules in motion under the electron microscope, giving chemistry a new pair of eyes and a wonder that he shares openly with students.

Osamu Nureki reveals the exquisite machinery of life at atomic resolution, and his structures of channels and genome-editing enzymes turn invisible molecular workings into knowledge the whole field can use.

Through vast simulations, Naoki Yoshida traces how the first stars and galaxies lit up the young universe, patiently reconstructing a cosmic history none of us could ever witness directly.

A pioneer of antiprotonic helium spectroscopy at CERN, Ryugo Hayano also turned toward his fellow citizens after Fukushima, measuring radiation honestly and calmly to help ordinary people understand their own safety.

Takeshi Saito works in the deep and demanding country of arithmetic geometry, and his work on characteristic cycles and ramification is the sort of quiet, foundational mathematics that other mathematicians build upon for decades.

A Fellow of the Econometric Society and past President of the Game Theory Society, Michihiro Kandori has deepened our understanding of how cooperation and social norms emerge, teaching it with a generosity that reaches far beyond Japan.

Takeo Hoshi has spent a career explaining the Japanese economy and its banks to the world with unusual clarity, and returned home to teach so that the next generation can read those lessons firsthand.

Tadashi Shiraishi has made Japanese competition law legible to the world, and cares enough about teaching that he writes openly about how to introduce law itself to newcomers.

Sachi Takaya listens carefully to migrants and asks what belonging really means in contemporary Japan, doing the humane, unglamorous sociology that helps a society see the people at its margins.

Yukiko Muramoto studies how minds and cultures quietly shape each other, from pluralistic ignorance to the gratitude that binds a group together, and does it with warmth as well as rigor.

Akito Sakasai reads the literature of Japan's imperial and postwar years for the voices of resistance within it, reminding us that stories are one of the ways people refuse to be erased.