Prize Recipient

Kenji Urayama
Kyoto University

"For insightful experiments that probe the nature of polymer networks."

Kenji Urayama is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Chemistry at Kyoto University. He joined Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University as an Assistant Professor in 1994, with Bachelor's and Master's degrees (1990 and 1992) from Kyoto University. In 1996 he received a Ph.D. from Kyoto University. He did postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research in 1998. In 2003 he moved to the Department of Materials Chemistry at Kyoto University as a Lecturer, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005.

His main interest focuses on the stimuli-response relationships of polymer networks and gels. He has done researches on the multi-axial stress-strain behavior and viscoelasticity of topology-controlled polymer networks, the responses of liquid crystalline gels against temperature and electric-field, and thermodynamics and kinetics for swelling of gels under mechanical forces.

He is a member of the APS, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (SPSJ), the Society of Rheology, Japan (SRJ), and other three Japanese societies. His honors include the Award for Encouragement of Research in Polymer Science of SPSJ (2000) and the Young Researcher Award of SRJ (2005).

Murugappan Muthukumar (Chair), Anne Mayes, Steve Granick, Rick Register, Barry Farmer, Tim Lodge, John Torkelson, Jack Douglas, Nitash Balsara