Eiji Abe is Professor and Department Head in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tokyo. Following an M.Eng. at the Institute for Materials Research in Tohoku University (1993), he joined the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba and worked there as Researcher (2001) and Senior Researcher until 2005. He obtained a Ph.D. from Tohoku University in 2001. He has published more than 100 papers in reputed journals and contributed more than 50 keynote/invited presentations in the international conferences.
He has been serving as Editorial Board Member of Journal of Alloys and Compounds. He is Head of the large-scale JSPS national project of 15M$ funding "Materials Science on Mille-Feuille Structure (FY2018-FY2022)". His research interests focus on microstructures of alloys, crystallography of complex alloys/compounds, thermodynamics and phase transformations in alloys, electron microscopy (TEM/STEM), computer simulations/first-principles calculations, magnesium alloys, aluminum alloys, rare-earth compounds, and quasicrystals. Yoshihito Kawamura is Professor and has been Director of the Magnesium Research Center (MRC) at Kumamoto University in Japan since 2011. In 2000, he joined Kumamoto University as Associate Professor (2000) and then Full Professor (2004). Prior to his appointments at Kumamoto University, he was Assistant Professor (1993) and Associate Professor (1999) in IMR at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. He earned his Ph.D.
degree in metallurgy from Tohoku University in 1993. He worked at NIPPONDENSO Co., Ltd., (now DENSO Corporation) until 1989, after he got his M.S. degree in metallurgy at Nagoya University in 1985. His research interests have been focused on the fundamental design of alloys and processes of advanced magnesium alloys. He developed an innovative LPSO-type Mg alloy.
He has published more than 350 papers, with more than 17,000 citations and an h-index of 66. He also contributed more than 50 plenary/keynote/invited presentations in the international conferences. In 2017 he was awarded a medal with purple ribbon from the Emperor of Japan for his academic achievement and contribution. He has been serving as Associate Editor of Journal of Magnesium and Alloys. He was Leader of the large JSPS national project (US$15M), "Materials Science on LPSO Structure (FY2011-FY2015)".