Another international award for Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ilya Okulov, head of a section in the department Process Engineering at Leibniz-IWT: For the current semester, he is once again awarded a visiting professorship at the renowned Institute for Materials Research (abbreviated IMR or Kinken (金研, Kinken)), at the Tohoku University in Japan. Since 2017, Dr. Okulov has joined several times as a visiting researcher and visiting professor in the reserach group of Prof. Hidemi Kato (deputy director of IMR) at the university. In the winter semester 2021/2022, he will further strengthen the cooperation and exchange between the Tohoku University, the University of Bremen and the Leibniz-IWT.

In collaboration with the research group of Prof. Hidemi Kato, Asocc. Prof. Dr. Okulov will be focusing on the synthesis of advanced biomedical materials by liquid metal dealloying. Moreover, Dr. Okulov will serve as lecturer and co-supervisor of students at the Tohoku University.

Tohoku University is currently ranked 1st nationally by the Times Higher Education (THE) for the second year in a row (teaching and learning environment, international orientation of staff and students, citability and impact of research, and knowledge transfer to industry were evaluated here, see news here). The Institute for Materials Research is one of the top institutions in the field of Materials Science in the world.

Most recently, Dr. Okulov was appointed as an Associate Professor (part-time) at the Ural Federal University (UrFU) Russia in 2020, where he had been very successful in advancing cooperation research projects with the Leibniz-IWT and the University of Bremen as well as teaching courses. Since 2021, he has been appointed as head of the department "Processing of Functional Materials" within the main department of process engineering at Leibniz-IWT.