Hideyuki Arata

Contribution

Arata substantially contributed to develop a new interdisciplinary field by harmonizing Molecular biology, Analytical chemistry, Biophysics and Plant/Agricultural Sciences, with Microengineering and Nanoscience. He is the inventor of Free Rotation Magnetic Tweezers (FRMT) and is the first to observe a DNA twist by a single biomolecule by hand-made FRMT. He actively giving lectures at Universities and Research Institutes worldwide, such as École Normale Supérieure (Paris), University of Tokyo, Peking University, ETH Zurich, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as an editor in multiple academic journals such as The Journal of Engineering (UK), Frontiers in Bioscience (USA), Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

Biography

Arata’s family is the male line descendant of the Prince of Goeku in Ryukyu Kingdom, Shô Ryûtoku, the fourth prince of the King Shō Shin, the third of the line of the Second Shō Dynasty. He spent his childhood in Belmont, Massachusetts, while his father, a theoretical physicist who obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Masao Kotani (the tutor of the Emperor Akihito), worked at Harvard University under Martin Karplus (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013). His mother is a cousin of Yoko Gushiken, a famous Tarento in Japan and former Light flyweight boxing champion of World Boxing Association (WBA).

After graduated from Japanese La Salle Academy, he received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees all in electrical engineering, specialized in MEMS and Bio-MEMS, from the University of Tokyo. In accordance with the advice by Phillip Allen Sharp (Nobel Prize in Medicine 1993), he moved into the field of single molecule biophysics under the advisory of Jean-Louis Viovy at Curie Institute (Paris). After his postdoctoral training at Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and at RIKEN, he was appointed as a Group Leader/Designated Associate Professor at Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University in 2011 at the age of 31. After his appointment as a Visiting scholar (Visiting Associate Professor) at Harvard University with David Weitz, he joined Milliman Inc. Tokyo office since 2015.

His serious activity as an amateur pianist drove American composer Frederic Rzewski to dedicate Nanosonata (2006), the later Nanosonatas Book I, No. 1, to him. He also actively held concerts, such as “Okinawa-US friendship concert” at the base chapel, by the attendance of the commanding officer, in Camp Courtney, a U.S. Marine Base located in Uruma City, Okinawa. During his stay in Paris, he studied the piano under Olivier Gardon. He also studied under Pascal Rogé and Philippe Entremont at Conservatoir de Nice summer academie, and Gabriel Tacchino at Mozarteum University of Salzburg.

Honors and awards

Arata received numerous awards from organizations and institutions in various fields of science and technology, including Young Engineers Award by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (jp) (2005, the youngest awardee), Young Innovator Award by CHEMINAS (jp) (2013), ITbM Research Award (2014), The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry Award for Younger Researchers(jp) (2014), Ishida Prize by Nagoya University (2014), and The Young Scientists' Prize by Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2015). He is an alumnus of the 61st. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, when he honored the support from Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.