Satoshi Kawata received his BSc, Msc, and PhD all in Applied Physics in 1974, 76, and 79, respectively, from Osaka University.  After the experience of postdoctral fellow of JSPS, he spent two years in University of California, at Irvine as a Research Associate.  He joined in Osaka University as a faculty member in 1981 and was promoted to a full Professor of Applied Physics in 1993. He joined RIKEN near Tokyo as a Chief Scientist leading Nanophotonics Laboratory from 2002 to 2012.  Professor Kawata is a Professor of Departments of Applied Physics and Frontier Bioscience and the Executive Director of Photonics Advanced Research Center of Osaka University.  Professor Kawata is a Fellow of OSA, IOP, SPIE, and JSAP. He serves as the Vice-President of JSAP (Japan Society of Applied Physics),  ex-President of Spectroscopical Society of Japan, ex-Editor of Optics Communications, and General co-chair of SPIE Nano Science and Engineering.

He is one of the pioneers in near field optics (the inventor of tip-enhanced near-field microscopy), three-dimensional microscopy (laser  CT microscopy, 3D data storage), plasmoics (SPR sensors, plasmon holography, plasmon laser, plasmonic microscopy), multi-photon engineering (two-photon polymerization, two-photon isomerization, two-photon photorefraction, two-photon SPP, etc), bio-imaging, and signal recovery (image and spectrum restoration based on constrained nonlinear optimization).

He has authored/edited more than 25 books and published more than 320 papers with h-index 54, and was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Emperor of Japan, Japan IBM Science Award, LVMH  da Vinci Excellence, Shimadzu Award, and many others. The "8-micron bull" fabricated with his invented two-photon technology has been awarded in Guinness World Record Book 2004 Edition. 

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