Kyoko Nozaki is a highly regarded organic chemist.  The overarching goal of the research carried out by the Nozaki group in Tokyo is to design highly atom-economical processes for a sustainable future. They design “molecular catalysts” for new and efficient reactions for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, organic functional materials, and polymeric materials.

Dr Nozaki was born in Osaka and educated at Kyoto University where she received her BSc (1986) and, under the guidance of Prof Kiitiro Utimoto, her PhD (1991). During her PhD studies she spent a year as an exchange student in the lab of Prof Clayton H Heathcock at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Nozaki joined the faculty of Kyoto University in 1991 and moved to the University of Tokyo in 2002, becoming full professor there a year later. 

Her accomplishments include the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists (1998), the Organometallic Chemistry directed towards Organic Synthesis (OMCOS) Prize (2003), the Mukaiyama Award (2008), the Saruhashi Prize (2008), the Mitsui Chemicals Catalysis Science Award (2009), the 40^th G. Stafford Whitby Memorial Lectureship at University of Akron (2010), the Society of Polymer Science, Japan Award (2012), Schlenk Lectureship at Universitätstadt Tübingen (2012), the 1^st Casey Lecturer at University of Wisconsin, Madison (2013), Tarrant Lecturer of Organic Chemistry at University of Florida (2014), the 30^th W. S. Johnson Lecturer at Stanford University (2014), ACS Arthur Doolittle Award (2014), Vananzi Distinguished Lecturer at ETH, Zürich (2017), the Karl-Ziegler-Guest Professorship at Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim (2018), and Earl Muetterties Lectureship at University of California, Berkeley (2019). Currently, she serves as Senior Editor for Chem Lett (CSJ) and is on the Advisory Board for Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (Wiely), Chem. Rev. (ACS), Macromolecules (ACS), ACS Macrolett (ACS), and Materials Chemistry Frontiers (RSC). Her research interest is focused on development of homogeneous catalysts for polymer synthesis and organic synthesis.

Dr Nozaki was named one of the 2021 L'Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the same year.

Kuggie Vallee Distinguished Lecture at the University of Oxford, October 21, 2019: "Homogeneous Catalysis for Organic Synthesis and Polymer Synthesis."