April 3, 2009
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| Dr. Michihiro Nagao. |
Dr. Michihiro Nagao received a 2009 Young Scientist Award from the Physical Society of Japan at their annual meeting in Tokyo. Dr. Nagao presented his award lecture on March 28 at Rikkyo University, entitled "Concentration dependence of shape and structure fluctuations of droplet microemulsions investigated by neutron spin echo spectroscopy."
The Physical Society of Japan encompasses 13 fields of research in the physical sciences, and established the Young Scientists Awards in order to encourage young researchers in their research work in these various fields. There are approximately 18,000 members in the JPS, and 50 Young Scientist Awards are given each year. Dr. Nagao received the award in the area of soft- matter physics.
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| Dr. Michihiro Nagao (right) receiving the Award from the Chair of the Award Screening Committee. |
In their recommendation for the award, the Award Committee wrote: “In many areas of materials science, including biological systems, it is important to clarify nanometer scale structures and dynamics to understand the behavior. In some cases, such as self-assembling soft matter molecules (e.g. polymers, amphiphiles and so on) the temporal and structural correlations may be hierarchical. Small-angle neutron scattering technique is one of the most powerful experimental techniques to apply for this purpose, but unfortunately it is often difficult to obtain useful information due to the limitations of traditional model-dependent analyses. However, Dr. Nagao realized a new analysis method to obtain structural information without assuming such a model under certain conditions. Based on this idea he studied the structure of a typical soft matter system, a micro-emulsion composed of water, oil, and amphiphiles. In addition, he expanded the idea to analyze neutron spin echo data, and it succeeded in decoupling the analyses of the shape and structure fluctuations in the spherical microemulsions. As a result, he obtained some important findings that the water droplet surrounded by amphiphiles has not uniformly dispersed in oil medium but forms micro clusters, and so on. These data analysis methods can be applied to some other soft matter systems, such as micelles and biological systems, and more future evolution is expected. Based on these achievements, the Young Scientist Award Screening Committee judged that the study done by Dr. Nagao is suitable for winning the prize in its impact to the field, its originality, farsightedness, and potential for future evolution."
Dr. Nagao was born in Hiroshima, Japan, and received his doctorate from the University of Tokyo in 2001. He was a Research Associate at the Neutron Science Laboratory, Institute for Solid State Physics, at the University of Tokyo from 1997-2006. He joined IUCF in 2006 as a Staff Physicist, and as Guest Researcher at the Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
