While many of the products using our laser products are recognized around the world, the components of the products are not widely publicized. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for giving such a great award to the GaN-based semiconductor laser (LD), which is a less conspicuous product.

As I mentioned in my speech at the award ceremony, Mr. Nagao designed the blue LD device; Mr. Hirao designed the ridge structure and electrode devices; Mr. Morizumi has been in charge of ensuring LD reliability and Mr. Kozuru developed the new package. In addition to their achievements, commercialization would not have been possible without the cooperation of the development, engineering, and production departments. I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to Mr. Nagahama, Mr. Kozaki, and everyone else in the LD Division for their pioneering work in GaN-based LDs. Furthermore, my special thanks go to our valued partners for adopting our green LDs developed for cinema projectors in movie theaters.

I mainly devoted efforts to developing green LDs with a wavelength of 532nm for cinema applications as a project leader. We could not have achieved these accomplishments without the contributions of all those who worked with us.

For those who are interested in working for or partnering with Nichia, our company pursues developments of new technologies and innovation to enrich our society, and the great facilities and work environment support us to achieve our goals. Having “Ever Researching for a Brighter World” as our motto, Nichia has grown along with the development of the optical semiconductor industry, starting with the refining of calcium, followed by gallium metal and compound semiconductors, and then progressing to optical semiconductors such as blue/white LEDs and ultraviolet to green LDs. Nichia is a company that encourages us to take on new challenges.

We will continue to develop new light sources that contribute to the world with our team members.

I am truly honored to have received this award. I was involved in the development of a package equipped with laser chips, known as OctoLas. Around that time, the mainstream laser packages used in projectors were TO-CAN types, which contained a single chip. However, this posed a significant challenge because, due to the need for greater light output, it was necessary to use multiple CANs in tandem and doing so tended to increase the size of the projector and elevate costs. On the other hand, OctoLas integrates multiple chips into a single package and features a structure that dramatically improves heat dissipation. This has allowed us to achieve a light source that is compact, high-powered, and cost-effective.

Developing an entirely new structure, including the assembly process, presented various difficulties. However, I believe we were able to realize this thanks to the cooperation of many people within the company and the opportunity to work on the development of various component technologies up to that point. I will continue to work on technological development to evolve laser light sources.

I am very honored and delighted to receive this award as praise for all the efforts and research achievements we have made over the years. I believe that this amazing award will serve as a catalyst that will bring worldwide recognition to Nichia's technology and motivate us to innovate even more achievements.
This award was made possible by our team members and all of the people involved who are supporting us. I would like to express my deepest appreciation for their contributions to the technology and product development. There were countless trials and errors in the technology development process, and I experienced significant stress and pressure during the product development process. However, thanks to the cooperation and efforts of many people working with us, we have succeeded in developing a laser light source with the best performance in the world.
We will continuously work on technology developments to improve laser light sources and dedicate efforts to contributing to technological innovation.

I was very surprised and am deeply honored that we received this award. It gave me great motivation. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who worked with us.
Especially for cinema applications, it is usually a requirement to have long product lifetime, lasting for many thousands of hours, and excellent reliability for high-power blue and green LDs.
In order to avoid COD (catastrophic optical damage), a problem in which an LD suddenly fails to emit light that has occurred especially in blue LDs, it was necessary to improve the LD chips, though this improvement was difficult to accomplish. In addition, since it took a long time to verify that the required reliability was being achieved, we found it very challenging to meet the higher outputs according to the roadmap presented to the customers. The laser projectors that use blue and green LDs greatly enhance the color vibrancy of the screen, which enables people to have an immersive film experience. I hope that similar high-quality movie experiences will become readily available in homes as well.

I feel blessed and privileged to receive this prestigious award as an engineer. Every member of the LD team worked hard, from planning to research, production, and sales, and this award is the result of all our team's efforts.

Thanks to Nichia's excellent facilities and supportive work environment, we can embody our ideas throughout the research and development process unconstrained, and I believe this is what helped lead us to the achievement of blue and green laser diodes with the world's highest luminous efficiency. Although there are few opportunities for the steady work of our engineers to be recognized by the public, I sincerely hope that this achievement will encourage children and students to realize how interesting technology is and motivate them to become engineers. We wish to continue to innovate and create products that enhance people's lives and our society.

Finally, I would like to thank my parents for raising me, my wife for her support, and my two daughters.