The AONSA Prize 2017
The Selection Committee (SC) for the AONSA Prize 2017 received multiple nominees
by the nomination deadline (August 31, 2016) and intensively reviewed them for a fewmonths. The SC gladly recognizes that all nominees made significant contributions andhighly qualified, reflecting the quality of neutron science in the Asia-Oceania region.
Finally the SC unanimously nominated Professor Nobuo Niimura as a recipient to the17th Executive Committee Meeting held in Mumbai, India on November 18, 2016 andthe SC’s nomination was officially approved. The recipient will be awarded a certificate,a medal and monetary prize (US$5,000) at the Prize Ceremony to be held during theICNS-2017 (July 9-13, 2017), Daejeon, Korea.

Nobuo Niimura

Specially Assigned Research Fellow Ibaraki University
Citation: “For his continuous contributions tothe instrumental development and practicaluse of neutrons from Tohoku Linac, KENS,
JRR-2 and 3 to J-PARC, especially theinvention of the neutron imaging plate which
opened a new paradigm in neutron protein
crystallography all over the world including
Asia-Oceania region, and for his devoted
mentoring of young scientists in thecommunity of neutron science.”
Nobuo Niimura received Ph.D fromUniversity of Tokyo in March 1970 and inDecember, became a Research Associate ofFaculty of Science Tohoku University. In theFaculty, he first met Professors Motoharu
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Kimura and Noboru Watanabe who initiatedthe construction of pulsed neutron source
using an electron linear accelerator (TohokuLinac). Nobuo also participated in theconstruction and in the utilization pulsed
neutron beam for material science. (One ofhis pioneering works done in Tohoku
University is a time-dependent pulsed
neutron scattering study on ferroelectricmaterial under high electric field.) In Tohoku
University he accepted and grew many
young scientists who later on played
important roles for the construction andutilization of spallation neutron sources atKEK(KENS) and at J-PARC. Soon after he1

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became a Professor of Tohoku University, hemoved to Japan Atomic Energy ResearchInstitute (JAERI) in Tokai and became aPrime Scientist in 1998. After the retirementof JAERI he moved to Ibaraki University andbecame a Professor of Graduate School in2003 and Special Research Professor in 2008,
Specially Assigned Research Fellow in 2013.
In Ibaraki University, he also grew many
young scientists and played an important role
for the establishment of the Frontier
Research Center for Applied AtomicSciences, which accepts undergraduate andgraduate students who study neutron
scattering technique using pulsed neutron
beam in J-PARC.
Nobuo’s most important and directcontribution to neutron science is thedevelopment of a neutron imaging plate(NIP) and the first practical use of NIP toneutron
proteincrystallography.
He
constructed
NIP-equipped
neutrondiffractometers which evoked a great impact
in the field of neutron protein crystallography.
The high efficiency of NIPs as an area
detector triggered further installation invarious diffractometers in reactor-based
neutron sources not only in the Asia-Oceania
region (KOALA at OPAL and BioC atHANARO) but also in the world (LADI-IIIat ILL, BIODIFF at FRM-II and IMAGINEat HFIR).
During the construction of pulsed neutron
source in J-PARC Nobuo also took hisleadership for the construction of thespectrometer iBIX in J-PARC, which became
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one of unique and important time-of-flightdiffractometersforneutron
proteincrystallography in the Asia-Oceania region.
By using these instruments Nobuo
systematically studied the role of hydrogen,protons,
andhydration
inbio-macromolecules,
whichprovides
indispensable information to understand thefunction of bio-macromolecules.
For his seminal achievement in neutronscience he received the following awards,
Tsukuba Science Award (1996), Nikkei BP
Award (1998), Prize of Radiation of Applied
Physics Society of Japan (1998) and the first
JSNS（Japanese Neutron Science Society）
Science Prize (2003).
Kazuyoshi Yamada
Vice president of AONSA

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