Yukihiro Ozaki

Yukihiro Ozaki obtained his PhD from Osaka University in 1978. After spending two years at National Research Council, Canada, he joined the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo in 1981. In 1989 he moved to Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. Since 1993, he was a professor in the Department of Chemistry, School of Science and Technology, Kwansei Gakuin University. Ozaki retired in 2018, and currently, he is a professor emeritus and a university fellow there, a guest professor of Kobe University, and a guest principal researcher of RIKEN.

Ozaki has long been involved in the studies of vibrational spectroscopy, including Raman, infrared, and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. He has been very active for Raman spectroscopy, particularly for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). He has explored the mechanism of SERS and semiconductor-enhanced Raman scattering and developed their applications to nanomaterials and biological samples. He has been concerned with various applications of vibrational spectroscopy; he was one of the pioneers of applications of Raman spectroscopy to medical diagnoses. Ozaki has also been very active for NIR spectroscopy studies, from basic studies of overtones and combinations, development of instruments, spectra analysis, and applications. He applied quantum chemical calculations and two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy to various spectroscopy from FUV to far-infrared/terahertz and Raman spectroscopy.

He has over 1,120 research publications as well as 70 reviews/book chapters and is a co-author or co-editor of 19 books. Ozaki received many awards, including the Bomem-Michelson Award (2014), The Medal with Purple Ribbon from Japanese Emperor (2018), Pittsburg Spectroscopy Award (2019, Charles Mann Award for Applied Raman Spectroscopy (2020), Karl Norris Award (2021), and The Medal of Ioannes Marcus Marci (2022). In 2025, he received the Ellis R. Lippincott Award, “For a lifetime research accomplishments and breakthroughs across broad areas of Raman, resonance Raman, near-infrared, surface-enhanced, vacuum ultraviolet, 2-dimensional correlation (2D-COS) spectroscopies and chemometrics.”