On October 2, Eiichi Nakamura, Foreign Member of the Royal Society and Special-term Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, was formally appointed as Chair Professor at Nankai University. The appointment ceremony was held in the Haibing Center on Balitai Campus, Nankai University. Prof. Chen Yulu, President of Nankai University, presented the Letter of Appointment to Professor Nakamura and conferred upon him the university emblem.

The ceremony was attended by Prof. Zhou Qilin, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chief Scientist at the Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter; Prof. Chen Jun, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Vice President of Nankai University; Sheng Bin, Vice President of Nankai University; and Zhu Shoufei, Vice President of Nankai University and Director of the Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter. The ceremony was presided over by Prof. Zhu Shoufei.

Chen Yulu extended a warm welcome to Professor Nakamura on his appointment as Chair Professor at Nankai University. He stated that as a world-renowned organic chemist, Professor Nakamura has maintained close ties with NKU for many years, jointly advancing deeper exploration in chemical research. Professor Nakamura’s full-time appointment at NKU will further boost the development of chemistry at the university, while also building new bridges for strong collaboration between Nankai University and the University of Tokyo, as well as other leading research institutions. Nankai University will provide full support for Professor Nakamura’s teaching and research endeavors, making it a new pinnacle for him to realize even greater academic aspirations.

Professor Nakamura expressed his gratitude for the appointment and shared his academic career, research achievements, and educational philosophy. He emphasized that the fundamental duty of a scientist is to serve society and address the essential needs of the people. Building upon the existing strong collaboration, he hopes to join forces with NKU’s experts, scholars, and top-tier teams to achieve more significant results in scientific research and talent cultivation, while also promoting more substantive cooperation between Nankai University and the University of Tokyo.

Professor Nakamura was elected as Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and appointed as a Lecture Professor at Nankai University in 2024. This year, he was conferred the title of Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society and elected as Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Previously, he served as Chief Scientist at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Japan Science and Technology Agency, and Member of the Science Council of Japan. He has been awarded major honors including the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, and Medal with Purple Ribbon. He has long been engaged in research spanning physical organic chemistry, organic synthetic chemistry, catalytic chemistry, and modern electronic materials chemistry. Through interdisciplinary work bridging materials science and nanoscience, he has expanded the frontiers of organic chemistry.

Over the past two decades, Professor Nakamura has utilized ultra-fast high-resolution electron microscopy to record and analyze a wide range of chemical phenomena, from organic and inorganic chemistry to materials chemistry, at the single-atom and single-molecule level. His work has achieved a long-sought goal in chemistry and yielded internationally pioneering research outcomes.

His team has pioneered the application of four-dimensional time-resolved transmission electron microscopy in organic chemistry, surpassing previous observational limits for time-resolved three-dimensional animations of organic molecules and resolving a series of technical challenges for TEM observation of organic molecules. They were the first to visualize organic chemical reactions, and recently developed a novel EM-based method for entropy measurement, pioneering a new direction for EM-based surface synthesis. To date, his team has published 566 papers in internationally authoritative journals, including 5 in Science, 1 in Nature and 9 in its sister journals, and 172 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, accumulating over 50,000 citations. In September 2025, his team’s latest research findings was published in Science, with Nankai University listed as a corresponding institution.

Nankai University plans to collaborate with Professor Nakamura’s team through the Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter to jointly establish the “International Joint Research Center for Innovative Molecular Technology, Nankai University”. This center will introduce world-leading novel molecular imaging technologies and develop new organic functional materials tailored for “Life and Health” and “Resources and Energy” applications. This initiative will enable a quantum leap in Nankai University’s capacity to address major national strategic demands in new materials, forging new advantages for the connotative and high-quality development of the university’s “Double First-Class” initiative.

（Edited and translated by Nankai News Team.)