Professor Tomasz Dietl honoured with the Tohoku University International Award – Special Award

We are pleased to announce that our colleague, Professor Tomasz Dietl, a full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and head of the International Center for Interfacing Magnetism and Superconductivity with Topological Matter (MagTop), has been honoured by our Japanese colleagues with this year’s Tohoku University International Award – Special Award. We warmly congratulate the laureate and wish him continued success and fruitful work.

The award ceremony for the Tohoku University International Award – Special Award will be held during Tohoku University’s Homecoming Day 2025, scheduled for Saturday, October 11, 2025, at the Tohoku University Centennial Hall (Kawauchi Hagi Hall).

The nomination announcement published on Tohoku University’s website states that “Prof. Dietl is a globally respected theoretical physicist known for his work in spintronics and topological materials. His 2000 paper published in Science, which proposed a theory for the ferromagnetism of diluted magnetic semiconductors, is the most cited paper ever published from Tohoku University (9,910 citations as of April 30, 2025). He has played a vital role in developing the university’s spintronics research. From 1999, he served as a professor at the Research Institute of Electrical Communication, and from 2012 to 2023, he was a Principal Investigator at AIMR. Currently, he leads the MagTop Center at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His lifetime citations exceed 35,000, with an h-index over 70. In education, he has also been deeply involved in the GP-Spin international graduate program at Tohoku, mentoring many doctoral students. His impact was visibly celebrated at the GP-Spin 10th Anniversary Event in February 2025”.

Tohoku University, located in the city of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, is one of Japan's leading and most prestigious national universities. It enrolls over 15,000 students across 10 faculties. Professor Dietl’s connection to Tohoku University dates back to the 1990s.

Established in 2022, the Tohoku University International Award is presented to individuals affiliated with the university who have made significant contributions to enhancing its international visibility through their global activities.

Tomasz Dietl earned his doctoral and habilitation degrees in experimental and theoretical condensed matter physics in 1977 and 1983, respectively, and was appointed professor in 1990 at the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences. He was the founder and head of the Laboratory for Cryogenic and Spintronic Studies and has led a research team there since 1986. Professor Dietl completed postdoctoral fellowships at École Polytechnique in Paris and at the Technical University of Munich. He has also worked as a visiting professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, the University of Grenoble, Tohoku University in Sendai, and the University of Orsay. He was a full professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Warsaw (2004-2016) and at the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR) at Tohoku University in Sendai (2012-2023).

Prof. Dietl’s current research interests focus on developing material systems and device concepts for nanoscale spintronics, topological insulators, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic semiconductors, and hybrid metal/semiconductor nanostructures. He has authored or co-authored 380 scientific papers and 30 popular science articles and has delivered over 200 invited lectures at international meetings, including nine plenary lectures at major multidisciplinary physics conferences.

In 2008, Tomasz Dietl was awarded the Advanced Grant (FunDMS) by the European Research Council (ERC), and in 2012, he received the Maestro project grant from the National Science Center (NCN).

In 1998, he became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and in 2002, he was elected to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Commission on Low Temperature Physics. He has also been named a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), the American Physical Society, and the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 2004, 2015, and 2019, respectively. In 2009, Professor Dietl was elected to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Warsaw Scientific Society, and in 2011, he became a member of Academia Europaea. In the same year, he was appointed by the European Commission to the Scientific Council and Steering Committee of the ERC for the 2011-2014 term. He is currently the Chair of the National Science Center’s Council for the 2024-2026 term.

Professor Dietl has received numerous awards, including the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Award in Poland (1997), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in Germany (2003), the Agilent Technologies European Physical Prize (2005), and the Foundation for Polish Science Award (2006), which he received jointly with David D. Awschalom (USA) and Hideo Ohno (Japan) “for pioneering work that paved the way for semiconductor spintronics”. He was also honoured with the Marian Smoluchowski Medal of the Polish Physical Society (2010). In 2013, he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.