The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology is awarded annually by the Inamori Foundation. The Prize is one of three Kyoto Prize categories; the others are the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. The first Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology was awarded to Rudolf E. Kálmán, the "creator of modern control and system theory". The Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in fields which are traditionally not honored with a Nobel Prize.

Fields The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology is awarded on a rotating basis to researchers in the following four fields: Electronics Biotechnology and Medical Technology Materials Science and Engineering Information Science

Laureates Electronics Year Laureate Country Citation Image Name 1985 Rudolf Emil Kalman "Establishment of the Modern Control Theory Based on the State Space Approach." 1989 Amos E. Joel, Jr. "Pioneering Contribution to the Electronic Switching Technology for Telecommunications, Especially that Based on the Concept of 'Stored Program Control'." 1993 Jack St. Clair Kilby "Creation of the Concept of the Monolithic Semiconductor Integrated Circuit and Its Demonstration." 1997 Federico Faggin "Development of the World’s First Microprocessor." Marcian Edward Hoff, Jr. Stanley Mazor Masatoshi Shima 2001 Zhores Ivanovich Alferov "A Pioneering Step in the Development of Optoelectronics through Success in Continuous Operation of Semiconductor Lasers at Room Temperature." Izuo Hayashi Morton B. Panish 2005 George H. Heilmeier "Pioneering contributions to the realization of flat-panel displays using liquid crystals." 2009 Isamu Akasaki "Pioneering Work on Gallium Nitride p-n Junctions and Related Contributions to the Development of Blue Light Emitting Devices." 2013 Robert Heath Dennard "Invention of Dynamic Random Access Memory and Proposal of Guidelines for FET Miniaturization." 2017 Takashi Mimura Invention of the High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) and Its Development for the Progress of Information and Communications Technology." 2022 Carver Mead "Leading Contributions to the Establishment of the Guiding Principles for VLSI Systems Design." 2026 Tsutomu Miyasaka "Creation of Next-Generation Photovoltaic Technologies, Perovskite Solar Cells." Tsutomu Miyasaka 2026

Biotechnology and Medical Technology Year Laureate Country Citation Image Name 1986 Nicole Marthe Le Douarin "Outstanding Contribution to Embryology through the Development of the Technology for Making Chicken/Quail Chimeras." 1990 Sydney Brenner "Pioneering Contribution to Molecular Biology through Demonstration of Messenger RNA and Establishment of C. Elegans as an Experimental System for Developmental Biology." 1994 Paul Christian Lauterbur "Proposal of the Basic Principles and Outstanding Contribution to the Development of MRI that Confers a Great Benefit on Clinical Medicine." 1998 Kurt Wüthrich "Outstanding Contribution to Biology through the Expansion of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy to the Structure Analyses of Biological Macromolecules in Water Solution, an Environment Similar to That in the Living Cell." 2002 Leroy Edward Hood "Contributions to life sciences through the automation of protein and DNA sequencing and synthesis." 2006 Leonard Arthur Herzenberg "Outstanding contribution to life sciences with the development of a flow cytometer that uses fluorescent-labeled monoclonal antibodies." 2010 Shinya Yamanaka "Development of Technology for Generating Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) Cells." 2014 Robert Samuel Langer "Creation of Tissue Engineering and Drug Delivery System Technologies." 2018 Karl Deisseroth "Discovery of Optogenetics and Development of Causal Systems Neuroscience." 2023 Ryuzo Yanagimachi "Contributions to the Elucidation of Fertilization Mechanisms and the Establishment of Microinsemination Technology."

Materials Science and Engineering Year Laureate Country Citation Image Name 1987 Morris Cohen "Fundamental Contribution to Development of New Materials Based on Creation of Broad and Basic Insights into the Metal Phase Transformation and Structure-Property Relationship." 1991 Michael Szwarc "Pioneering Contribution to Research and Development of Polymeric Materials by Discovering 'Living Polymerization'." 1995 George William Gray "Fundamental Contribution to Research and Development of Liquid Crystal Materials by Establishing the Practical Molecular Design Methods." 1999 W. David Kingery "Fundamental Contribution to Development of the Ceramics Science and Technology Based on the Physicochemical Theory." 2003 George McClelland Whitesides "Contributions to Nanomaterials Science through the Development of Organic Molecular Self-Assembly Technique." 2007 Hiroo Inokuchi "Pioneering and Fundamental Contributions to Organic Molecular Electronics." 2011 John Werner Cahn "Outstanding Contribution to Alloy Materials Engineering by the Establishment of Spinodal Decomposition Theory." 2015 Toyoki Kunitake "Pioneering Contributions to the Materials Sciences by Discovering Synthetic Bilayer Membranes and Creating the Field of Chemistry Based on Molecular Self-Assembly." 2019 Ching W. Tang "Pioneering Contributions to the Birth of High-Efficiency Organic Light-Emitting Diodes and Their Applications." 2024 John Pendry "Contribution of the Theoretical Construction of Metamaterials to the Field of Material Science."

Information Science Year Laureate Country Citation Image Name 1988 John McCarthy "Fundamental Contribution to the Field of Artificial Intelligence and the Invention of LISP, a Programming Language." 1992 Maurice Vincent Wilkes "Building and Designing the First Practical Stored Program Computer and Pioneering Studies of Computer Architecture." 1996 Donald Ervin Knuth "Outstanding Contribution to Various Fields of the Computer Science Ranging from the Art of Computer Programming to the Development of Epoch-Making Electronic Publishing Tools." 2000 Antony Hoare "Pioneering and Fundamental Contributions to the Progress of Software Science." 2004 Alan Curtis Kay "Creation of the concept of modern personal computing and contribution to its realization." 2008 Richard Manning Karp "Fundamental Contributions to the Development of the Theory of Computational Complexity." 2012 Ivan Edward Sutherland "Pioneering Achievements in the Development of Computer Graphics and Interactive Interfaces." 2016 Takeo Kanade "Pioneering Contributions, both Theoretical and Practical, to Computer Vision and Robotics." 2020No award because of COVID-19 pandemic 2021 Andrew Chi-Chih Yao "Pioneering Contributions to a New Theory of Computation and Communication and a Fundamental Theory for its Security." 2025 Shun-ichi Amari "Pioneering Contributions to Opening Up Theoretical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Establishment of Information Geometry."

See also Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy List of Kyoto Prize winners List of computer-related awards List of computer science awards

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