Dr. Junji Kido

Distinguished Research Professor, Frontier Center for Organic Materials, Yamagata University

Prof. Kido has received his B.S. degree in applied chemistry from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1984 and the M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in polymer chemistry from Polytechnic University (Today, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University), New York, in 1987 and 1989, respectively.

In 1989, he joined the department of polymer chemistry in Yamagata University in Japan as an assistant professor and promoted to an associate professor in 1995, to a full professor in 2002, and to a distinguished research professor in 2011. He was appointed as the General Director for “Research Institute for Organic Electronics” founded by the Yamagata prefectural government from 2003 to 2010. He also served as the project leader for the Japanese national projects on "Advanced Organic Semiconductor Devices" from 2002 to 2007 and "Organic Lighting" since 2004 both sponsored by METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry).

His current research activities are focused on organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). He invented white-light-emitting OLEDs in 1993 for the first time and continuously working on developing high performance OLEDs. Wall Street Journal (May 10, 1995) cited his work entitled "Japanese Light Researcher May Turn LED into Gold". He is a co-founder of “Lumiotec Inc.” to manufacture white OLED panels for general lighting applications. He has also founded “Organic Lighting Corporation” to manufacture OLED lighting fixtures in 2009.

His work has been recognized by awards from the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (Society Award) and the Society for Information Display, U.S.A. (Special Recognition Award) in 2002. He also received the Herman F. Mark Technology Medal from Polytechnic University, USA, (2007) and he received the Medal with Purple Ribbon from Japanese Emperor (2013). In 2015, he received the Karl Ferdinand Braun Award from Society for Information Display, USA, and the Award from the Chemical Society of Japan in 2021.