With the vision of "extracting the universal messages underlying proteins from their molecular structures," Professor Hiroshi Ishikita of the Theoretical Chemistry Division, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), The University of Tokyo, and the Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo—who works at the forefront of theoretical chemistry and biophysics of proteins, elucidating the functions of photosynthetic proteins, photoreceptor proteins, enzymes, and drug-target proteins—has been appointed as an advisor.

Hiroshi Ishikita
Born in 1974. Professor at RCAST and the Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo.
After completing his master's degree in 2000 in the Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, he obtained his Ph.D. from Freie Universität Berlin in 2005. He also conducted research under Professor A. Warshel at Pennsylvania State University—one of the developers of the QM/MM method and recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Combining experimental and theoretical studies, he pursues cross-disciplinary research spanning biology, physics, and chemistry with photosynthesis as his main focus.
In 2013, theoretical calculations revealed that Mn₄ is the atom responsible for the characteristic "distorted chair" structure of the manganese–calcium cluster (Mn₄CaO₅ complex) in the photosystem II (PSII) protein. Furthermore, in 2015, he discovered that O₄, rather than the previously assumed O₅, is the oxygen atom that first abstracts a proton. The findings, published in Nature Communications, have significantly advanced our understanding of the mechanism of photosynthetic water-splitting.