Professor Giuseppe Pezzotti, 51, a materials scientist at Kyoto Institute of Technology, effortlessly switches from a newspaper interview in English to discuss research collaboration with a colleague in fluent Japanese. Even sartorially, he straddles East and West: While his torso is clad in button-down shirt, khaki pants and lime green sweater, his bare feet are crammed into Japanese zori sandals. This is a man not bound by conventions.

Pezzotti was born and raised in Rome, the son of an engineer ostracized by his aristocratic family for marrying a commoner from southern Italy. "I admired my father. He made a choice of love and was the kind of person who knows what he wants," he says.

Pezzotti studied engineering at Rome University, his father's alma mater, in the mid-1980s. "I became attracted to microscopy," he said. "Japan then had the world's best microscopes and free-flowing research funds. Scientific research in Italy at the time was extremely basic. We studied scientific theories in 15th century classroom buildings, did few experiments and lacked advanced equipment. I had read about atoms and molecules but had never seen them.