Chihaya Adachi is a Japan-born scientist and director of Kyushu University’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research (OPERA), a large multi-disciplinary team of physicists, chemists, and engineers from both academia and industry.

His team conducts research in the field of organic electronics, in which interdisciplinary research between organic chemistry, physics, electronic engineering, optics, and device engineering is crucial for accelerating development. They always welcome international graduate students and researchers who are interested in doing an internship or collaborative research.

Adachi first became interested in organic electronics early on in his graduate school days before it was an established field. He is now recognized as one of this field’s great innovators, especially in the development of materials for organic light-emitting diodes. By using extremely thin organic films with thicknesses of only 100 nanometers, he and his team were able to succeed in the realization of third-generation organic electroluminescent (EL) materials (thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials) in 2012 and published the results in the authoritative international science journal Nature. In 2016, he received a prestigious Japan Research Front Award for this accomplishment. Since then, his OPERA team have also developed first glow-in-the-dark materials based on organic molecules.

His other awards include but are not limited to SID (Society for Information Display) Fellow Award in 2014 and Japan Society of Applied Physics Fellow Award in 2016. In 2007, Adachi received the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He has over 500 published papers in the field of organic electronics and his lab in Kyushu University has filed over 180 patents since 1989.

In terms of his scientific career, Adachi hopes to continue defying conventional wisdom by opening doors to new science that will remain in textbooks, and, in turn, by cultivating industries that will support the Japan of the future. In his daily life, he is used to getting up early to jog, is always looking for a great cup of coffee and has a passion for planes and piloting.

 “It is not necessarily the case that only those who worked hard to get good grades in so-called “study” become good researchers. From an early age we should expose ourselves to as many things as possible, read “just one more” book, meet “just one more” person, and expand our potential.”