Executive Profile

Satoshi Kawata
Chairman and Representative

Satoshi Kawata founded Nanophoton with his colleagues in 2003. It was more than 20 years after he was inspired to see professors and students start up small companies from their garages in California, where he was a postdoc. He was promoted as a full professor in 1993 by the Osaka University and as a Chief Scientist at RIKEN in 2002. He has been known as the inventor of two-photon 3D nano-lithography, tip-enhanced near-field microscopy, and many others. He was the first professor ever in Osaka University for the startup as a founder. He retired from Chief Scientist in RIKEN in 2015 (now, Honorary Scientist), and from Osaka University in 2017(now, Professor Emeritus). He currently serves the government funding agency JST as the CREST supervisor of “Innovative Photonics” projects, and Optica (Formerly OSA) as the President 2022.

Kengo Fujiwara
Director and Vice President

In 1996, Kengo Fujiwara joined Daiwabo Information System Co. Ltd, a major IT distributor. After engaged in corporate sales and purchasing, he was assigned to the Corporate Planning Department in HQ in 2002, and experienced building med-term business planning, cross-company projects, and Investor Relations,etc. In July 2011, he joined Nanophoton Co. and installed as a Director. He was in charge of back-office operations such as Finance, General Affairs, Legal, and Human Resources, etc. Since 2017, he had been in charge of Sales and International Operations for expanding overseas business. In April 2020, appointed as Director of Nanophoton Korea. In June 2020, appointed as Vice President, and in charge of Finance, Administration, Sales, and International Operations, etc.
His credo is “To train yourself through acts”. His hobby is playing baseball. He is involved with the junior baseball team to discover the growth and potential of children and to contribute to society.
Born in 1974. Graduated the Graduate School of Management, GLOBIS University, MBA.

Minoru Kobayashi
Director

He was born in 1978. His boyhood hobby was taking apart many things including electronics. He decided to pursue a career in engineering after watching the documentary program “the autobiography of Japan as a nation of electronics” on NHK. A Second-harmonic microscope, which he worked on during his master’s course at the Osaka University, became the first product of Nanophoton. After obtained his degree, he joined Nanophoton, wants to play a key role in a growing company. Since then, he has been consistently involved in product development. In 2017, he was appointed director He is in charge of research, development, manufacturing, and service.

Taikan Minamoto
Executive Officer, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

After graduating from Osaka University’s Faculty of Economics in 1987, Mr. Minamoto joined Shimadzu Corporation, where he worked as a sales representative mainly for government offices and universities. In 2008, he returned to the analytical instrument industry as general manager of the Japanese subsidiary of a foreign competitor of Nanophoton, where he was in charge of marketing, human resources, and administration. He then started his own company, developing instruments, providing HR consulting to social welfare corporations, etc., and marketing consulting to analytical instrument manufacturers including Nanophoton, etc. From April 2022, he was the GM of Marketing, and from November 2023, he became the Executive Officer of Nanophoton, As CMO, he is responsible for overall marketing including sales, application development, and services.

Hiroyuki Watanabe
Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Born in 1959, Hiroyuki Watanabe joined Fuji Photo Film (now FUJIFILM) in 1984. After working for a long time in product development as an analytical engineer, he served as the Director of Analytical Technology Center, the Director of Advanced Core Technology Laboratory, and a Fellow (professional officer). During this time, he served as a member of the evaluation committee of JST and as a technical committee member of the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and other organizations. After leaving the company in November 2022, he joined Nanophoton in January 2023. He received his Ph. D. in 2005 from the Kawata Laboratory, Osaka University, where he worked on near-field Raman microscopy.

Hyojin Kim
Director

During Dr. Kim’s PhD course in USA, he co-developed the glow discharge Atomic absorption spectrometer with Analyte Co. and this instrument is still commercially available in the market. After return back to Korea, he founded the Spectrontech Co and developed the various analytical instruments such as Liquid discharge, DC/ RF glow discharge, Portable NIR spectrometer and Skin moisture analyzer. To expand his business experience to a global market, he joined the Bruker Optics (Germany) and establish the first local branch office at Korea in 2005. He also worked as a regional manager in SEA including five local office in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia as well as local distributors (Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam). After joined the Nanophoton Korea in 2016, he successfully established the local office in Korea and distributor channels in SG, MY and TH. In April 2020, he appointed as representative director of Nanophoton Korea and also appointed as a board member of Nanophoton Coporation in June 2020.