Extremophiles for a Sustainable Future

Professor Masahiro Ito received his B.S. in Chemistry from Rikkyo University and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (now Institute of Science Tokyo) in 1994. He conducted postdoctoral research in Biochemistry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York before joining the Faculty of Life Sciences at Toyo University in 1997. His honors include the Extremophiles Young Poster Award (2002), the Japan Society for Extremophiles Encouragement Award (2005), and the JSPS Award for Outstanding Young Scientists (2011). He has served as Program Officer at MEXT and, since 2020, as Program Director of Toyo University’s Bio-Resilience Research Project, now in its second phase. He is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Microbiology, on the editorial boards of AEM, Extremophiles and Engineering Microbiology and an expert member of Japan’s Food Safety Commission. His research centers on extremophiles, especially alkaliphilic and halophilic microorganisms. Professor Issay Narumi is a faculty member in the Faculty of Life Sciences at Toyo University, where he serves as Professor and has also acted as the Dean of the faculty. His research focuses on applied microbiology and molecular biology, with particular emphasis on DNA repair mechanisms and the exceptional radiation resistance of certain bacteria. His research explores DNA repair mechanisms in extremophilic bacteria to understand better how these organisms survive severe radiation damage. He utilizes interdisciplinary approaches, including genetics, biochemistry, and structural biology. Professor Narumi also teaches courses in microbiology and radiation biology. Prior to his position at Toyo University, he served as a Senior Researcher in the Quantum Beam Application Research Division at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), where he investigated ion-beam biology and microbial mutations. His work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and contributes to both fundamental science and applied microbial biotechnology. Professor Noriyuki Doukyu obtained his PhD at Tokyo Institute of Technology (now Institute of Science Tokyo) and subsequently served as an assistant professor at the same university. He then joined Toyo University as an associate professor, later becoming a professor, a position he holds to this day. His specialty is applied microbiology, with a particular focus on research into organic solvent-tolerant microorganisms and methanogens.