Winners of the Inaugural 2021 IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Awards

1. The IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Medal—an award to recognize significant lifetime contribution to analytical chemistry and for researchers who have a substantial record of achievements demonstrated by the number and quality of their publications, by being actively involved in international partnerships as well as by their commitment in the training of the next generation of analytical chemists.

2. The Emerging Innovator Award in Analytical Chemistry—an award to recognize outstanding work undertaken by researchers who are at the early stage of their independent career.

The inaugural 2021 IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Medal recipient is Joseph Wang.

Wang is a Distinguished Professor of Nanoengineering and SAIC Endowed Chair at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He also serves as the Director of the UCSD Center of Wearable Sensors.

Wang obtained his higher education at the Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa), being awarded his D.Sc. in 1978. From 1978 to 1980 he served as a research associate at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). Between 1980 and 2004 he was a member of the Chemistry department at NMSU where he held a Regents Professor and a Manasse Chair between 2001 and 2004, and between 2004 and 2008 he served as the Director of the Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors and a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at Arizona State University, and as Chair of the UCSD Nanoengineering Department between 2014 and 2019.

His research interests include the development of electrochemical biosensors, nanomotors and nanorobots, wearable sensors, flexible stretchable materials, biomedical applications of nanomachines, printable devices, nanomaterials-based sensors, bioelectronics, biorecognition and clinical diagnostics, microfluidic (“Lab-on-Chip”) devices, microfabrication, biofuel cells, new interfaces for electroanalysis and electrocatalysis, sensor/recognition coatings, and remote environmental and security sensing. He has authored over 1150 research papers, 11 books, 45 patents, and 35 book chapters. His H-Index (Google Scholar) is 176. Wang has presented more than 400 invited talks, including 200 plenary and keynote lectures in 60 countries. He was been the Founding Editor and Chief Editor of the international journal Electroanalysis (Wiley-VCH) for 3 decades (1988-2018). He has been a member of the Advisory Editor Board of 25 other international journals.

Wang has been a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher since 2015 and has been included in the Thompson Reuters List of 2015 World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. He has received numerous international awards, honorary doctorates and professorships.

Wang has been a key contributor to IUPAC project “Electrochemical DNA-based biosensors: terms and methodology” (Pure Appl. Chem. 82, 1161–1187, 2010).

Professor Wang has mentored 35 PhD students and trained over 350 post-doc and visiting scholar fellows. These trainees currently hold leading academic and industrial positions throughout the globe.

The Emerging Innovator Award in Analytical Chemistry is awarded to Tsuyoshi Minami, PhD.

Minami received his BEng in 2006 and MEng in 2008 from Saitama University, PhD in Engineering from Tokyo Metropolitan University under the direction of Yuji Kubo. Between 2011 and 2013 he was a postdoctoral research associate at Bowling Green State University working with Pavel Anzenbacher, Jr., where he has started his academic career by the appointment as a research assistant professor. In 2014, he moved to Yamagata University as an assistant professor. From 2016 to 2019 he was a lecturer at the University of Tokyo where he was selected as an excellent young independent researcher and since 2019 he is an associate professor. He is also a visiting professor at Yamagata University, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and The University of Technology of Compiègne, France.

His research fields based on analytical chemistry include design and synthesis of artificial receptors, semiconductor materials and nano materials, and device fabrication for sensing applications in solution, solid and gas phases. In his group, two types of research topics are mainly researched: 1) High-throughput Analysis Based on Supramolecular Sensor Arrays and 2) Chemical Sensors based on Organic Thin-Film Transistors Functionalized with Molecular Recognition Materials.

Minami has discovered the self-assembled optical sensor array systems as promising for sensitive detection of analytes (as chiral amines, herbicide glyphosate, saccharides in a soft drink, sulfur-containing amino acids, toxic heavy metal ions) without any synthetic burden. In the field of sensors, he designed and fabricated an extended-gate type organic thin-film transistor for cross-hierarchical detection of various analytes covering a wide range of sizes from small ions to biomacromolecules. Both of his pioneered research topics open a new avenue for practical applications of supramolecular sensors in various fields such as healthcare, environmental assessment, etc. His dedication and hard work have earned him 88 publications (53 papers as a corresponding author) including 13 Top10 % papers (Clarivate analytics).

His 32 representative awards cover The Young Scientists Prize, The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT, 2020), The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists (2020), ChemComm Emerging Investigators 2018 (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2018), The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry Award for Young Researchers (2017).

Minami has succeeded in interdisciplinary studies based on analytical and supramolecular chemistry from the molecular design up to the device fabrication effective for the discovery of a new receptor for drugs, simultaneous detection of multi-analytes, and sensitive detection of analytes in a variety of molecular scale without any labeling. Thus, his research field contributes to the real-world implementation of analytical devices for improve people’s quality of life.

Minami’s teaching fields are represented by undergraduate laboratory experiments at Yamagata University, supramolecular structural chemistry at Tokyo Metropolitan University, lectures on advanced information system, introductory lecturers for chemistry and biotechnology, polymer and functional materials chemistry, and basic biomedical engineering at The University of Tokyo. Among his students and associates there are 5 postdoctoral researchers, 11 PhD candidates and 5 MS researchers.