Kenichiro Itami

Kenichiro Itami studied chemistry at Kyoto University and earned his PhD in 1998. After serving as an Assistant Professor at Kyoto University, he joined Nagoya University as an Associate Professor in 2005 and became Full Professor in 2008. In 2012, he founded the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) at Nagoya University and served as its director. He also led the JST-ERATO Itami Molecular Nanocarbon Project (2013–2020). In 2024, he became Chief Scientist at RIKEN, launching the Molecule Creation Laboratory, and in 2025 he was appointed Team Director at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science. His research focuses on the creation of a range of structurally uniform molecular nanocarbons of fundamental and practical importance by bottom-up chemical synthesis.