Dr. Naoki Aikawa has been involved in laboratory and clinical studies of burn injuries since 1973 when he was appointed Research and Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Shriners Burn Institute Boston Unit. During his three and a half years in Boston, he conducted studies of host responses to surgical insults focusing on the hemodynamic and metabolic responses in burn patients. Characterizing those responses has expanded our understanding of the pathophysiology of injury and improved our ability to manage successfully not only severely burned patients but also mechanical trauma and postoperative surgical patients since burn injury is an objective and quantitative surgical stress model defined by time after injury and extent of the burn.

As an educator, Dr. Aikawa’s accomplishments range from being a highly effective mentor of students, residents, and junior faculty to being a member and chairman of national committees, such as the Chair of the National Medical Licensing Examination Committee. He has authored numerous publications including textbook chapters and scientific papers in high impact peer reviewed biomedical English language and Japanese language journals. He has served on the editorial boards of Burns, and the Journal of Burn Care and Research, as well as many other burn related surgical journals, e.g. Shock, Surgical Infection, and Acute Medicine and Surgery.

Dr. Aikawa’s accomplishments as clinician, educator, administrator, and investigator have been recognized locally, nationally and globally as indexed by his appointments as medical adviser for both the Canadian and U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, his frequent service as invited lecturer and Visiting Professor, his honorary memberships in other nations’ burn societies, and his election to the Presidency of the ISBI and the Presidency of the 2004 12th ISBI Congress. The high quality of his work has been validated by his designation as the 1995 Evans Lecturer by the ABA, his receipt of ISBI Honorary Life Membership in 2006, his receipt of the Testimonial for Emergency Medicine and the Firefighter General’s Medal for Merit from the Japanese Government in 2004, and his receipt of the Whitaker International Burn Prize in 2007 from the Fondazione Giuseppe Whitaker of Italy. To promote ISBI participation by younger members of burn teams from developing countries, he has generously funded the Young Investigator Prizes at each ISBI Congress since 2012.