Seiji Shinkai

is a Japanese chemist and professor of Kyushu University, and emeritus professor.

Early life Shinkai was born in Fukuoka prefecture, Japan, in 1944. He completed his B.S. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1972 from Kyushu University.

Career and research He is known for his pioneering research in molecular self-assembly. Molecular self-assembly is the assembly of molecules without guidance or management from an outside source.

His main field of expertise and research interests are Host Guest Chemistry, Molecular Recognition, Liquid Crystals/Organic Gelators, Sugar Sensing/Sugar-Based Combinatorial Chemistry, Boronic-acids, Polysaccharide-Polynucleotide Interactions, Sol-Gel Transcription and Inorganic Combinatorial Chemistry. His most recent research is related to chiral discrimination using AIE.

In 1979 he published the first light driven molecular machine in Tetrahedron Letters.

To date (July 2019) he has published over 1024 original paper and 219 reviews and books.

Recognition The Chemical Society of Japan Progress Award (1978) Izatt-Christensen International Award in (1998) Becker Lecture Award (1999) Vielberth Lectureship Award (2002) Clarivate Citation Laureates (2013) Molecular Sensors & Molecular Logic Gates (MSMLG) Award (2014) Received the Person of Cultural Merit from the Japanese Government in 2018.