Rate My Professor Kenji Satake

Kenji Satake is Professor Emeritus at the Earthquake Research Institute of The University of Tokyo. He earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from Hokkaido University and a Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo in 1987. His career includes positions as Research Assistant at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Visiting Research Associate at California Institute of Technology, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, and various research roles at the Geological Survey of Japan and the Active Fault Research Center of AIST before joining the Earthquake Research Institute as Professor in 2008, where he also served as Director from 2019 to 2022.

Satake’s research focuses on seismology, with emphasis on giant earthquakes and tsunamis. He has contributed to studies of subduction zone events and historical tsunami records, including work on the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. He received the National Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2005 and has been recognized as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. Satake has held leadership roles including President of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society and the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior, and he has served on committees related to tsunami evaluation and active fault studies. His publications include the 1996 paper in Nature on the Cascadia earthquake and co-authorship of the book The Orphan Tsunami of 1700.