Minoru Hanaya

Background

About Minoru Hanaya

Dr. Minoru Hanaya is a Vice-President of Gunma University, Japan as the Executive Director of Research and Planning. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Gunma University, and he advanced the reorganization of the faculty to the Graduate School of Science and Technology in 2013. Based on this achievement, he was appointed the first director of the Project Planning Section at Gunma University, founded in 2016 as the president's think tank. In 2021, he was appointed as the Executive Director of Research and Planning and has been directing the strategy planning for the university to enhance its functions in education, academic research, and community contributions. He is also a research professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Gunma University. He received his B.Sc, M.Sc, and D.Sc. degrees from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1984, 1986, and 1989, respectively. In 1989, he joined the Faculty of Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, as a Research Associate. In 2001, he was awarded the Fujino Research Award from Tejima Seiichi Commemorative Foundation, Japan, for his research leading to the understanding of crystallization mechanisms in homogeneous systems. Since May 2001, he has been with Gunma University, where he was an Associate Professor and became a Professor in 2004. His current research activities are directed at improving the functional properties of materials by nano-structure controlling and inorganic-organic hybridization. In the way of the work, he has achieved over 14% efficiency of the light-to-electric energy conversion and over 1.4 V photovoltage in dye-sensitized solar cells, which have been investigated actively as a photovoltaic device in the next generation, by using organosilicon dyes possessing sophisticatedly designed molecular structures. At present, the efficiency and the photovoltage are the highest among those reported so far for dye-sensitized solar cells.