Prof. Kimito Funatsu will be the recipient of
the 2019 Herman Skolnik Award presented by the ACS Division of Chemical
Information, for his contributions to structure elucidation, de novo structure
generation and applications of cheminformatics methods to materials design and
chemical process control.
The prize consists of a
$3,000 honorarium and a plaque. Prof. Funatsu will also be invited to present an
award symposium at the Fall 2019 ACS National Meeting to be held in San
Diego.
For more than 35 years, Prof. Funatsu has made
pioneering scientific contributions to the evolving field of chemical
informatics. Prof. Funatsu’s seminal contributions include the
conceptualization and implementation of algorithms and expert systems for
structure elucidation and chemical synthesis design. To name just one, the
AIPHOS system (1988) represents one of the early applications of artificial
intelligence in chemistry. The structure elucidation and synthesis design
systems Prof. Funatsu developed have been extensively applied in the
pharmaceutical industry, demonstrating his dedication to first-class
problem-solving science. Beginning in 2000, Prof. Funatsu’s highly active
research program has been further expanded to materials design. In recent years,
he has increasingly focused on inverse QSAR analysis including de novo structure
generation and the development of the soft sensor methodology for chemical
process control (2011). The latter approach represents another par excellence
example of ground-breaking research with immediate practical and industrial
application potential. Given his unique research profile, Prof. Funatsu has been
able to secure large amounts of funding from the chemical and pharmaceutical
industries and drive large-scale collaborative projects at the interface between
academia and industry, most recently in the context of the CREST Program on Big
Data Applications funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. Taken
together, these efforts have left their mark on the scientific and industrial
landscape of Japan. With more than 200 peer-reviewed and well-recognized
publications, and a plethora of presentations and conference contributions,
Prof. Funatsu is among the core of leaders of the broadly defined chemical
information and informatics field worldwide and is highly regarded as
such.
Prof. Funatsu initiated the Computer Aided
Chemistry Forum for scientific communication and practical training in
cheminformatics, and established the Japanese Society of Cheminformatics as a
forum to bring academia and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries together.
Prof. Funatsu’s relentless community service efforts also included his
tenure as the President of the Division of Chemical Information and Computer
Sciences of the Chemical Society of Japan (2004–2014). Over the
years he received several awards in recognition of his many contributions,
including awards from the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology in
1988, from the Society of Computer Chemistry Japan in 2003, and from the Society
of Chemical Engineering in 2017.
Prof. Kimito Funatsu
obtained his Doctoral degree (Dr. Sci.) in physical organic chemistry from
Kyushu University (1983) and then joined Prof. Shinichi Sasaki’s group at
Toyohashi University of Technology in 1984. During his time with that group, he
worked on a variety of cheminformatics applications including the structure
elucidation system CHEMICS, the organic synthesis design systems AIPHOS and KOSP
as well as systems in the areas of de novo design, and chemogenomics. In 2004,
he moved to the University of Tokyo as a full Professor to continue research in
these areas, as well as expanding into material design and soft sensors for
monitoring and controlling chemical plants. In addition to his professorship he
is also the Research Director of the Data Science Center at the Nara Institute
of Science and Technology
(NAIST).
Rajarshi Guha
Chair,
CINF Awards Committee