4th Ryoji Noyori ACES Award

4th Ryoji Noyori ACES Award

Author: ChemistryViews

Keiji Maruoka, Kyoto University, Japan, is the winner of the fourth Ryoji Noyori ACES Award. The award is the highest honor given by the Asian Chemical Editorial Society (ACES) and recognizes outstanding work in chemistry. It was established in 2017 and is named after the Nobel laureate Ryoji Noyori, the founding Board Chair of Chemistry – An Asian Journal, the first ACES journal. The award includes an invitation to deliver a lecture at the 2023 Ryoji Noyori ACES Award Symposium, EUR 1,000, travel expenses, and a certificate.

Keiji Maruoka is awarded for his innovative work on high-performance organocatalysts for selective organic synthesis, as well as his international approach to scientific research, which exemplifies the collaborative ACES spirit. He says, “I am delighted to receive this prestigious Ryoji Noyori ACES Award, which is certainly a memorable one for celebrating my 70th birthday.”

Maruoka’s research interests include the design of high-performance organocatalysts and the development of conceptually new synthetic reactions for the synthesis of useful molecules. A very successful example is the rational design of the Simplified Maruoka Catalyst® that allows the industrial-scale synthesis of various artificial amino acids for pharmaceutical use.

 

Curriculum Vitae

Keiji Maruoka, born in 1953 in Mie, Japan, studied organic chemistry at the University of Hawaii, USA, where he completed his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under the supervision of Hisashi Yamamoto in 1980. After completing his degree, he held positions as Lecturer, Assistant Professor, and Associate Professor at Nagoya University, Japan, from 1980 to 1995, and as Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, from 1995 to 2001. He joined the Department of Chemistry, Kyoto University, Japan, as a Professor in 2000, and has served as Chairman of the Department in 2004/2005 and in 2016/2017. Currently, he is a Specially-Appointed Professor at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Kyoto University, Japan, and a Distinguished Professor at Guangdong University of Technology, China.

Among other honors, Keiji Maruoka received the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2011, the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (National Prize from The Japanese Emperor) in 2011, a Humboldt Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, Germany, in 2011, and the Japan Academy Prize in 2018. He also was selected as the 2019 The Chemical Record Lecturer. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and an Honorary Fellow of the Chemical Research Society of India and the Chemical Society of Japan.

Among other commitments, Maruoka has been a Co-Chair of the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry since the launch of the journal, is the Editor-in-Chief of The Chemical Record and an Editor of Tetrahedron Letters, and serves on the advisory boards of Chemistry – An Asian Journal, Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis, the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan, and Chemical Communications.


Selected Publications

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