International Council for Science (ICSU)
, candidate presentations, p. 22 is a Japanese

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

who is a professor at the Department of Life Sciences at the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

Early life and education

Kuroda was born in Akita but grew up in Miyagi, on the island of Honshu, Japan. She obtained her MSc (1972) and PhD (1975) in Chemistry from the University of Tokyo. Her doctorate focused on determining the stereochemistry of metal complexes.

Career

After her PhD, Kuroda worked at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

and the

Institute of Cancer Research The Institute of Cancer Research (the ICR) is a public research institute and a member institution of the University of London in London, United Kingdom, specialising in oncology. It was founded in 1909 as a research department of the Royal Ma ...

in the UK before returning to Japan in 1986. In 1992 she became the first woman to be made full professor of natural sciences at the University of Tokyo. Kuroda's field of research is primarily

chirality Chirality () is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object. An object or a system is ''chiral'' if it is distinguishable fro ...

within both

inorganic chemistry Inorganic chemistry deals with chemical synthesis, synthesis and behavior of inorganic compound, inorganic and organometallic chemistry, organometallic compounds. This field covers chemical compounds that are not carbon-based, which are the subj ...

and

organic chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...

.Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Two prominent researchers elected to the Academy's class for chemistry
press announcement, June 30, 2009 Part of her research has involved studying chirality in snail shells. Her work identified that the direction of the shell spiral is determined at very early stages of snail development. Her team later used

CRISPR CRISPR (; acronym of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. Each sequence within an individual prokaryotic CRISPR is d ...

genetic editing to show that this process is dependent on a single gene, Lsdia1. Kuroda has established the Science Interpreter Training Program at the University of Tokyo and was appointed to serve as a governor for the

Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation based in Cambridge, England. Its primary activity is the compilation and maintenance of the Cambridge Structural Database, a database of smal ...

in 2006. She has also served as Vice-President for External Relations in the

International Science Council The International Science Council (ISC) is an international non-governmental organization that unites scientific bodies at various levels across the social and natural sciences. The ISC was formed with its inaugural general assembly on 4 July 20 ...

Honours and awards

in 1993, Kuroda received the Saruhashi Prize for esteemed female scientists. On June 10, 2009, Kuroda was elected a foreign member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

in its class for chemistry. In 2013, Kuroda was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science. She has been nominated for awards by the Human Frontier Science Programme (HFSP) and by AcademiaNet.

References

External links

Kuroda Research Group

Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuroda, Reiko 21st-century Japanese chemists Japanese women chemists Academic staff of the University of Tokyo Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1947 births Living people Japanese women academics L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science laureates 21st-century Japanese women scientists Scientists from Sendai Scientists from Akita Prefecture