Hajime Okamoto

Professor Okamoto was born in Tokyo and raised in Hyogo Prefecture. Interested in physics since his junior high school days, he started out as a planetary science researcher at Kobe University Graduate School of Science and Technology. From 1993 to 1994, he engaged in research focused on clouds while studying at the GKSS Research Center in Germany on the invitation of the Institute Director, Professor Raschke, who had visited his supervisor Professor Mukai at his laboratory in Kobe to give a lecture. In 1996, he completed the doctoral program in science at Kobe University Graduate School of Science and Technology. After being appointed as the JSPS Research Fellow at the Center for Climate System Research, University of Tokyo, Professor Okamoto became a research fellow at the Communications Research Laboratory of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (current National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) in 1998. In 2001, he took the post of associate professor at Tohoku University Graduate School of Science. He joined Kyushu University Research Institute for Applied Mechanics as a professor in 2010. In 2017, Professor Okamoto was appointed as Distinguished Professor of Kyushu University. He was awarded the FY2011 Meteorological Society of Japan Prize. Professor Okamoto was a member of the joint science team for NASA’s CloudSat-CALIPSO satellites, which were launched in 2006, and was appointed co-chair of the JAXA-ESA joint earth observation satellite mission EarthCARE in 2013. He coordinates the entire EarthCARE satellite program, where researchers from Japan and Europe collaborate.