Tadashi Furuhara is a Professor and the Director of the Institute for Materials Research (IMR), Tohoku University, Japan. He obtained Bachelor and Master degrees at Kyoto University, Japan and a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A. Immediately after graduation, he joined the faculty of engineering, Kyoto University in 1989 and made research and education as an assistant and associate professor. Then he became a professor at Tohoku University in 2005.

His research activity covers a broad area in physical metallurgy of steels and non-ferrous alloys, such as phase transformations and precipitation, deformation and recrystallization, microstructure control by thermo-mechanical and thermo-chemical processing. Particularly, crystallography and interfacial phenomena in solid-solid phase transformation and their relation to nucleation and growth kinetics are main subjects of interest throughout his entire career.  

He also actively contributes to various academic societies in metallurgy field, the Japan Institute of Metals and Materials (JIM), the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan (ISIJ), the Japan Society for Heat Treatment (JSHT), the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) and ASM International (ASMI). He was a past Vice President of JIM and currently the President of ISIJ. He is also an editor of Acta and Scripta Materialia.