He obtained his Doctor of Engineering and Materials science from Tohoku University in 1975.

Prof. Akihisa Inoue(井上明久), is currently the Director of the Institute of Materials Research, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. During the 80's he was frequently invited at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, USA as a guest scientist for his expertise in amorphous metallic materials. He was also a visiting Scientist at the Swedish Institute of Metals Research, Stockholm and the Royal Institute of Technology for extended periods.

In 1988 Prof. Inoue while systematically checking the characteristics of the glass transition behaviour and the stability of supercooled liquid before crystallization in a wide variety of amorphous alloys made by various mixtures of substances, discovered the possibility of obtaining large scale "bulk" amorphous alloys with structures very close to those of the liquid phase. Subsequently a number of alloy systems belonging to nonferrous alloys types such as Ln-Al-TM, Zr-Al-TM, Pd-Cu-Ni-P, to ferrous alloy types such as Fe-Al-Ga-(P,B.C,Si), Co-Cr-(Al,Ga)-(P,B,Si) and a variety of over hundreds of alloys were discovered. The anomalous stabilization phenomenon implied that the liquid state is retained up to a temperature corresponding to 0.5Tm-0.6Tm, even at cooling rates of 0.1 to 100K/s, these alloys displaying the stabilization phenomenon have been named 'Amorphous alloys of the second generation' or Inoue alloys.

He is at present the leader of many National Research Programs including the well known ERATO/JST project called the "Inoue Super Liquid Glass Project".

Prof. Inoue is a pioneer in the field of amorphous materials and bulk glassy materials with over 1500 refereed publications.

200 patents.

Prof. Inoue has received over 34 awards from various professional societies in recent 12 years. Last June he was the recipient of the distinguished Japanese 2002 Gakushiin Shöo Award which is granted in the presence of the Emperor of Japan to only selected persons with distinguished achievements in the Japanese Scientific Community. In the recent ten years in a row, Prof. Akihisa Inoue has been recognized as the most quoted materials scientist and received the US-ISI Citation Award for the year 2000 tracking the trends and performance in Basic research in the world. and over 150 'invited talks' and is recognized as the inventor and discoverer of the new class of "bulk" Glassy Alloys.