A delegation from the National University of Uzbekistan visited Nagoya University on May 26, 2026, to present Distinguished Professor Hiroshi Amano with an Honorary Professorship, the university’s highest form of scholarly recognition. The ceremony was held at Toyoda Auditorium and attended by students and faculty members from Professor Amano’s laboratory, as well as Uzbek students studying at Nagoya University, and representatives from the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Japan.
The conferment marks the culmination of an exchange stretching back several years. When Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited Nagoya University in 2019 and received an Honorary Doctorate, he expressed a personal wish for Professor Amano to visit Uzbekistan. Following a period disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Amano delivered an online lecture to the university in 2022, then visited Tashkent in person in 2024 to give a lecture and participate in a roundtable with young researchers and scholars of Uzbekistan.
In his remarks at the ceremony, Professor Amano echoed the words President Mirziyoyev had spoken upon receiving his own honorary degree from Nagoya University in 2019, when the President declared that he was now a member of Nagoya University. “I am now a member of the National University of Uzbekistan,” Amano said, expressing his hope to continue deepening ties between the two institutions.
The award reflects the breadth and depth of the relationship between Nagoya University and Uzbekistan, a partnership that has been firmly anchored and continuously strengthened since the early 2000s.
