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We are excited to announce the recipients of the 2026 Akira Suzuki Awards. Congratulations to the Akira Suzuki Award winner Professor Michael J. Krische of The University of Texas, Austin and the ICReDD Award winner Professor Michele Parrinello of Istituto Italiano di Technologia / Università della Svizzera Italiana. For more details on this year’s award recipients, please refer to the “Recipients” tab.
The 6th Annual Akira Suzuki Awards Ceremony is scheduled to take place on October 7th, 2026 in conjunction with the 10th ICReDD International Symposium. Further details about the ceremony and participant registration will be announced via the symposium website.
The Akira Suzuki Awards were established in 2021 by the Akira Suzuki Award Organization Committee in commemoration of Professor Akira Suzuki being awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and to celebrate his 90th birthday. The purpose of the award is to recognize outstanding contributions to research in the discovery of chemical reactions, defined in the broadest sense, and to contribute to the advancement of science and technology.
The two awards, the Akira Suzuki Award and the ICReDD Award, will be bestowed upon a researcher who has achieved remarkable results in the development of chemical reactions in the field of experimental chemistry (Akira Suzuki Award) or the fields of computational (theoretical) chemistry and information science (ICReDD Award). Each award is given to one person each year, regardless of age or nationality.
There will be an award ceremony and an award lecture every year. The winners receive a medal and a monetary prize.
Recipients
2026 Akira Suzuki Award Winners
Akira Suzuki Award:
Michael J. Krische (The University of Texas at Austin)
Biography
Professor Michael J. Krische obtained a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley (1989), where he performed research with Professor Henry Rapoport. After a year abroad as a Fulbright Fellow, he initiated doctoral studies at Stanford University with Professor Barry Trost as a Veatch Graduate Fellow. Following receipt of his Ph.D. degree (1996), he joined the laboratory of Professor Jean-Marie Lehn at the Université Louis Pasteur as an NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow. In 1999, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. He was promoted directly to the rank of full professor (2004) and shortly thereafter appointed the Robert A. Welch Chair in Science (2007). Professor Krische has pioneered the use of hydrogenation and transfer hydrogenation in catalytic C-C bond formation, enabling a departure from the use of premetalated reagents in chemical synthesis.
(Cited from the official website of the University of Texas at Austin.)
Research
Prof. Krische has developed a new strategy to form C-C-bonds from readily available starting materials. His approach has led to numerous novel (asymmetric) catalytic reactions that proceed via hydrogenative cross coupling. These methods are widely used within the community. Also, while originating from method development in transition metal catalysis, his team is now among the top groups globally in total synthesis and frequently publishes amazingly short routes to oligopropionates that are based on his new methods. A real breakthrough for chemical synthesis for academia and industry.
Awards
Yamada-Koga Prize (2025)
Palladium Global Science Award (2025)
Israeli Chemical Society, Honorary Member (2022)
ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2020)
Korean Society of Organic Chemistry Lectureship Award (2019)
ICReDD Award:
Michele Parrinello
(Istituto Italiano di Technologia / Università della Svizzera Italiana)
Biography
Professor Michele Parrinello obtained a Laurea in physics from the University of Bologna in 1968. His career spans leading universities, national laboratories, industrial research centers, and major scientific institutions across Europe and the United States.
After working at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, the IBM research laboratory in Zurich, and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, he has served as Professor of Computational Sciences at ETH Zurich and the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland (2001- present). In 2018, he joined the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) as a Senior Researcher, and since 2020, he has served as the Principal Investigator of the Atomistic Simulations research unit at IIT.
Research
Professor Parrinello is internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions
to molecular simulation and theoretical chemistry. In particular, the development of
the Car–Parrinello molecular dynamics method established a revolutionary framework that
integrates electronic structure theory with molecular dynamics simulations, enabling
first-principles investigations of dynamical processes in complex systems. He is also a pioneer in the development of machine learning potential techniques, which have significantly expanded the scope of molecular simulations in recent years. His work has opened up entirely new possibilities for understanding chemical reactions, phase transitions, and structural transformations at the atomic scale.
Awards
Erwin Schrödinger Institute Medal (2025)
USI Medal (2025)
Clarivate Citation Laureate (2024)
Giulio Natta Medal (2021)
Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2020)
Past Recipients
Akira Suzuki Award:
| Year | Recipient | Affiliation |
| 2025 | Jin-Quan Yu | The Scripps Research Institute |
| 2024 | Gregory C. Fu | California Institute of Technology |
| 2023 | Erick M. Carreira | ETH Zürich |
| 2022 | John F. Hartwig | University of California-Berkeley |
| 2021 | Stephen L. Buchwald | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
ICReDD Award:
| Year | Year | Affiliation |
| 2025 | Emily A. Carter | Princeton University |
| 2024 | Alán Aspuru-Guzik | University of Toronto |
| 2023 | Frank Neese | Max Planck Institute for Coal Research |
| 2022 | Kendall N. Houk | University of California-Los Angeles |
| 2021 | David J. Wales | University of Cambridge |
About
Professor Akira Suzuki was born in Hokkaido, Japan, on September 12, 1930.
After graduating from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science at Hokkaido University in 1954, he completed a master’s degree at the Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University in 1956 and completed his PhD there in 1960.
In 1961, he became an assistant professor at the Department of Synthetic Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering at Hokkaido University. From 1973, he served as a professor at the Department of Applied Chemistry for about 20 years, retiring in 1994 to become a professor emeritus at Hokkaido University.
After his retirement, he served as a professor at Okayama University of Science in 1994 and at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts from 1995 to 2002.
During this period, he was an invited professor at Purdue University in the U.S. in 2001, and later became an invited professor and professor emeritus at various universities in Japan and abroad, including Hokkaido University.
In 2015, he was awarded the title of University Professor of Hokkaido University, which is given to researchers who have made globally outstanding educational and research achievements and who are recognized as contributing to the advancement of education and research at Hokkaido University over the long term.
For two years from 1963, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in H. C. Brown’s laboratory at Purdue University in the U.S., where he was engaged in research on the synthesis and utilization of organoboron compounds. After returning to Japan, he further developed this field and made many outstanding achievements. In particular, the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of organoboron compounds reported in 1979 has had a great impact not only on synthetic organic chemistry but also on a wide range of fields such as catalytic chemistry and materials science. The Suzuki coupling reaction, which was the reason he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has made a significant contribution to the development and mass production of products that are familiar to us, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, liquid crystals essential for IT equipment, and organic light-emitting diodes.
Organization
The selection of the winners is based on recommendations from the respective Selection Committees, which are composed of domestic and international experts commissioned by the chairman of the Award Organizing Committee. These recommendations are reviewed by the Award Organizing Committee and a final selection is made.
Award Organizing Committee:
Chairman: Hajime Ito (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Vice Chairman: Tetsuya Taketsugu (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Yoshihiro Sato (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Satoshi Maeda (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Tamiki Komatsuzaki (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Akira Suzuki Award Selection Committee:
Timothy F. Jamison (Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Bernhard Breit (Professor, University of Freiburg)
Benjamin List (Professor, Max Planck Institute and Specially Appointed Professor, ICReDD)
Hajime Ito (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Yoshihiro Sato (Professor, Hokkaido University)
ICReDD Award Selection Committee:
Michael Rubinstein (Professor, Duke University and Principal Investigator, ICReDD)
Alexandre Varnek (Professor, University of Strasbourg and Principal Investigator, ICReDD)
Hirofumi Sato (Professor, Kyoto University)
Tetsuya Taketsugu (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Satoshi Maeda (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Tamiki Komatsuzaki (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Junya Hasegawa (Professor, Hokkaido University)
Contact
Please direct any inquiries regarding the Akira Suzuki Awards to:
event[at]icredd.hokudai.ac.jp
The Akira Suzuki Awards are funded by the generous sponsorship of the Tosoh Corporation.
