Tadashi Furuhara is the professor of  Microstructure Design of Structural Metallic Materials Laboratory, 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. He  was also the 22nd director of IMR.

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 (JIMM), 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 JIMM and  currently the President of ISIJ.