Masao Doi - Fellow, Elected 2015

Polymer Physicist

Awarded Bingham Medal 2001

Fellow, Elected 2015

Professor Doi attended the University of Tokyo for both his undergraduate and graduate education, obtaining a B.A. in Applied Physics in 1970, an M.Sc. in Applied Physics in 1973, and a PhD in Engineering in 1976. Beginning in 1974, Doi served as Assistant Professor of Physics at the Tokyo Metropolitan University. He was promoted to Associate Professor of Physics in 1978, and he stayed in this position for eleven years. Doi moved to Nagoya University in 1989, first serving as Professor in Applied Physics and later as Professor in Computational Science and Engineering. He returned to the University of Tokyo in 2004 as a Professor in Applied Physics. In 2012, he took a year-long break from academia to serve as a Fellow of the Toyota Physical and Chemical Research Institute. He then joined the faculty of Beihang University in Beijing, China where he currently serves as the Thousand Talents Program Professor.

Doi accepted a Science Research Council Fellowship at Imperial College and the University of Cambridge from 1976 to 1978 and during this time worked closely with physicist Sir Sam Edwards, a collaboration that resulted in a series of papers laying out the Doi-Edwards theory of entangled polymer melt viscoelasticity. He also served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge from 1984 to 1985 during which time his book with Sam Edwards, The Theory of Polymer Dynamics , was written. Additionally, he served as the Project Leader of the National Project “Research and Development of Platform for Designing High Functional Materials” from 1998 to 2002. This impressive array of academic experience is matched by Doi’s research accomplishments, including his work on viscoelasticity and polymer dynamics, the rheology of mixtures and colloidal suspensions, a statistical theory for diffusion-controlled reactions, and gel electrophoresis of DNA. Currently Doi’s research centers around the physics, modeling, and simulation of soft matter, dealing with issues such as multiscale modeling, flow in micro and nano regions, the evaporation and drying process in polymer solutions, and gel dynamics. His books include Soft Matter Physics, Introduction to Polymer Physics, and The Theory of Polymer Dynamics. He also served as the project leader for OCTA, an integrated simulation system for soft materials that is freely-distributed under an open source policy.

Doi’s accomplishments have been internationally recognized by the award of the APS Polymer Physics Prize (2001), the Purple Ribbon Medal in Japan, Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Physics in the UK, and a Senior Humboldt Research Award in Germany, amongst others. Doi was the first non-North-American rheologist to be awarded the SOR’s Bingham Medal in 2001 .