_
Dr. Motohiko Tanaka (Ph.D.), now a professor of
Chubu University, was born in Tokyo (Japan). He is
interested in nature and arts, mainly paintings.
Academically, he started his study with the physics
of high-temperature space plasmas at the
University of Tokyo, and was awarded with Ph.D.
in 1981. Immediately following it, he moved to USA
and engaged in a post doctral research at the University of Maryland.
After returning to Japan, he developed the "macro-particle" simulation
code
to study the mesoscale kinetic phenomena of plasmas. By using it he proved
the origins of magnetic reconnection as due to the non-MHD effect (electron
inertia in which electrons move with separate freedom from ions).
Beginning in 1996 his research field shifted to strongly Coulomb-coupled
systems
when he had the occasion of an extended stay at MIT (the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, USA), and recently he added the research of solid-state
physics of microwave-material interactions.
His research includes microwave-materials interactions, Coulomb explosion of
hydrogen pellets irradiated by a short-pulse laser, ionic condensed matters
(charged polymers, molecular and biological systems) and nanosize matters
(solid, liquid), using both classical and quantum mechanical (ab initio)
molecular dynamics simulations. His recent works also include the peculiar
"charge inversion" (strong double layers on particles), DNA translocation
through a nanopore, and the ab initio molecular dynamics study of nano-sized
matters. To achieve efficient computational research, he is making R&D and
maintaining high-speed cluster machines.
Currently he is one of five research leaders and the secretary of the MEXT
project under Grant-in-aid for Prime Area Research of microwave fundamentals
and applications (http://phonon.nifs.ac.jp/).
Author's top page