The 2023 Faculty of Engineering Best Teaching Award is given to a a faculty member, Project Professor Sota Sato. He practiced highly effective teaching with outstanding teaching skills, worked on devising and improving educational methods, and practiced remarkable educational effects in his classrooms of “Analytical Chemistry III” and “Structure Analysis”. Based on the recommendation from each department, he was deemed appropriate for the prize.
https://www.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/topics/tp2024-04-02-001
1. Department : Department of Applied Chemistry
2. Name : Sota Sato
3. Position : Project Professor
4. Name of award and
The University of Tokyo, 2023 Faculty of Engineering Best Teaching Award
5. About awarded research
Project Professor Sota Sato of Social Cooperation Program “Integrated Molecular Structure Analysis Laboratory” in the Department of Applied Chemistry was highly evaluated for his outstanding teaching skills for the lectures “Analytical Chemistry III” and “Structure Analysis” at the University of Tokyo. In “Analytical Chemistry III,” the lectures are designed to provide students with a fundamental understanding of analytical methods, while in “Structure Analysis”, the lectures are designed to provide students with an applied and practical understanding of analytical methods. In both lectures, students are given detailed explanations of how what they have learned can be applied in their subsequent student experiments, research activities at undergraduate and graduate schools, and in their research activities after entering society. The effectiveness of this instruction is demonstrated in the question “Did you think this class will be useful for you in the future?” on the class evaluation questionnaire, which has received particularly high evaluations in past years. Furthermore, as a unique initiative, he takes the time to follow up on questions and comments in the free report section in the next lecture to ensure that students acquire knowledge more reliably and that the next year’s lectures are more fruitful.
He is also actively involved in educational activities outside the university, focusing on social contribution activities through mock classes for high school students and other activities to spread the fun and importance of chemistry based on molecular structures to people of all ages. In recent years, he has expanded his dissemination activities to a larger scale, including practical training using equipments for full-scale precision molecular structure analysis and promotion of understanding of open innovation activities through industry-academia-government collaboration that is integrated with urban development. In these activities, he has created “Crystalline Sponge san” (https://satolab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/featured/crystalline_sponge /), and the development of “VR-MD,” the world’s first system that allows users to see, touch, and enjoy molecules based on the physical principles of molecular motion (https://youtu.be/K1La6jp2ElA, https://satolab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/featured /03/), and other efforts to create 1 from 0.
