Professor Kozai obtained a BS degree in Horticultural Sciences from Chiba University, and Master and Doctoral degrees in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Tokyo. When he started his academic career in 1973 as an agricultural engineer, his work was focused on greenhouse environment control engineering. After establishing his early work on greenhouse light environments, energy saving, ventilation and computer control, his scientific interest extended to in vitro environment control in plant tissue culture, sugar-free media and photoautotrophic micro-propagation, and plant production in closed systems with artificial lighting. His first paper on plant production using LED was published in the early 1990’s.
He was inaugurated as the President of Chiba University in 2005. He subsequently returned to research and education as a professor emeritus in an endowed chair position at the Center for Environment, Health and Field Sciences, Chiba University, with a special focus on medicinal plant production under controlled environments. From 2010 to 2018, he worked as the President of Japan Plant Factory Association (non-profit organization) and has been leading the R & D of “plant factory with artificial lighting (PFAL)” for commercial production of plants and “integrative environment control of greenhouses” using heat pump, fogging and null-balance CO2 enrichment systems for hot summer regions.
Between 2010 and 2018, he gave invited lectures at more than 20 international conferences held in Abu Dhabi, Australia, China, England, Korea, Panama, Portugal, Thailand, Turkey and USA.
His awards include: Lifetime Achievement Award (2009) from Society of In Vitro Biology, USA; the 2002 Purple Ribbon Award from Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports; Japan Prize of Agricultural Sciences from Association of Japanese Agricultural Scientific Societies, and many others.
Publications: He has published more than 200 refereed papers over 50 book chapters and more than 10 books in English.
In 2016, LED Lighting for Urban Agriculture edited by T. Kozai, K Fujiwara and E. Runkle was published by Springer. In 2015, Plant Factory: An indoor vertical farming system for efficient quality food production edited by T. Kozai, G. Niu and M. Takagaki was published by Academic Press.