School of Science, Technology and Innovation Kobe University
Deputy Director, Center for Sustainable Resource Science, RIKEN

Akihiko Kondo received his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in Chemical Engineering (1988). He has started his faculty career in 1988 in Department of Applied Chemistry at Kyushu institute of technology. He was appointed as full professor of Kobe University in Department of Chemical Science and Engineering in 2003 and also appointed as a team leader at RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Sciences (CSRS) in 2012. He was appointed a dean of School of Science, Technology and Innovation at Kobe University in 2016. He became a member of Science Council Japan in 2017 and deputy director of RIKEN CSRS in 2020.

A. Kondo has developed various platform technologies such as cell surface display systems, metabolic pathway design tools, metabolic analysis technologies, genome editing and long chain DNA synthesis technologies. He also has applied these platform technologies for construction of various microbial cell factories for production of biofuels and various chemicals from biomass, and cyanobacteria and microalgae for production of oil and chemicals from CO2. He is a co-founder of several companies including BioPalette (genome editing), Synprogen (genome synthesis), AlgaeNexus (microalgae) and Bacchus Bioinovation (Biofundry). He has published more than 670 peer reviewed international papers.