Dr. Otal, in Prof. Tanaka's group, won third prize for his poster presentation at IAS International Conference on Energy Materials, held at Hong Kong, January 2026.

His presentation is titled Screening Cu paddlewheel MOFs for methane storage using CHGNet and techno-economic linker analysis and focuses on identifying practical MOF materials for efficient methane storage, building on his long-term research on MOFs in collaboration with Prof.Tanaka since 2021 and helping bridge the gap between materials design and real-world clean energy applications.