Organization

The department was established after the reorganization of former departments in chemistry at the faculty of engineering in 1993, as shown in the following scheme. It currently holds total 14 laboratories from the 3 divisions, Advanced Polymer Chemistry, Polymer Synthesis, Polymer Physics, and the 2 affiliated divisions, Polymer Design and Biomaterials Design. There are only a few institutes worldwide for research and education on polymer science in a scale of the department and it is currently the largest organization of this field in Japan.

Polymer science is characterized by interfusing materials science in academy with applied science in demands from society and thus holds a broad spectrum over various aspects like at fundamentals to application, synthesis to physics, theory to experiment, organic to inorganic, and micro to macro, etc. Under these circumstances, the Department of Polymer Chemistry is currently in a strong link on research with Institute for Chemical Research,  Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, and Advanced Biomedical Engineering Research Unit, as well as in cooperation with the divisions of synthesis and physics on the research of polymer chemistry.

Figure.   Divisions and laboratories of the department

The department assumes a leading position in this field on the global basis with the distinguished staffs working in extensive research fields of polymer chemistry which extends from the precision molecular synthesis over the collective structure of polymers and further onto the research on physical properties and functions.