2006 Distinguished Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

Tsuneji Nagai is chairman of The Nagai Foundation, Tokyo. From 1971 to 1999, he was professor Hoshi University in Tokyo, and from 2001 to 2004 was that institution’s president. Nagai received a BS in pharmacy in 1956, an MS in pharmacy in 1958, and a PhD in pharmacy in 1961, all from the University of Tokyo. He then completed postdoctoral studies at Columbia University (1965-66) and the University of Michigan (1966-67). In 1996, he received the Doctor Honoris Causa Degree from Hacettepe University, Turkey, and in 2001, the Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa Degree from the University of London, U.K.

Over his long and distinguished career, Nagai has received many awards and honors including the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Hoest-Madsen Medal (1986), the Japan National Invention Prize (1984), The Society Prize of Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (1988), The Society Prize of Society of Cyclodextrins Japan (1997), the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Research Achievement Award in Drug Delivery (1999), and others. In 1999, Nagai received the Japan Imperial Prize, Medal of Purple Ribbon, one of his nation’s greatest individual honors. This honor carried with it an audience with His Imperial Majesty Akihito, the 125th Emperor of Japan.

He was founder and president of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Japan (1985-87), and of The Society of Cyclodextrins, Japan (1993-96); vice president of FIP (1986-94), and president of Controlled Release Society (1996-97). Today, he is president of the Federation of the Asian Pharmaceutical Association College of Pharmacy and is editor–in-chief of the International Journal of Pharmaceutics and the Journal of Controlled Release.