Mayuko Isomura, an assistant professor of chemistry, has received an early-career grant from the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
Isomura was selected to receive a Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO) grant, which is a competitive funding program for early-career researchers and provides recipients with 3.5 years of research support, a little more than $250,000 in U.S. dollars.
Established in 1991, the PRESTO program is similar to the U.S. National Science Foundation's CAREER Award program. The purpose of PRESTO is promoting unique and challenging, internationally high-level basic research to address important problems and to produce creative and innovative technology seeds based on new scientific knowledge as a source of scientific and technological innovation that can transform society and the economy.
The title of Isomura's grant proposal that won this funding is "Creation of a Foundation for Nitrogen Cycle Molecular Conversion Based on the Control of Ammonia Reactivity". Isomura said her research group will develop novel catalysts that control ammonia reactivity, enabling efficient and selective synthesis of nitrogen-containing compounds while minimizing synthetic steps and waste.
The Isomura Lab is a synthetic organic chemistry group engaged in the development of new catalytic reactions to address fundamental challenges in chemical reactivity and enantioselectivity. The research mission seeks to expand the capabilities of organic synthesis by designing enantioselective catalytic methods that provide efficient access to valuable molecular architectures, particularly nitrogen-containing compounds.
Professor Isomura was born in Tokyo, Japan. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemistry from the University of Tokyo, where she conducted research in the laboratory of Professor Eiichi Nakamura. She earned her Ph.D. from ETH Zürich in 2020 under the direction of Professor Erick M. Carreira. Following her doctoral studies, she joined the group of Professor Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2025, Professor Isomura started her independent career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.