Introduction

I am passionate about modeling real-world business problems using advanced machine learning methods. I have a strong track record in successfully leading numerous customer engagements to deliver first-of-a-kind AI solutions across many different industries. Most of those solutions have been published in top AI/data mining conferences such as AAAI, IJCAI, ICDM, SDM, KDD, which makes me one of the leading experts in AI-powered industry solution development in IBM. In particular, I am known as one of the top experts in industrial anomaly detection and diagnosis, as evidenced by two textbooks on that topic. See, e.g., my LinkedIn article for my recent work on anomaly explanation.

My 20 years of experience in delivering AI-powered business solutions covers industries such as:

  • Automotive (IoT technologies, simulation, fleet management, etc.)
  • Condition-based monitoring of industrial systems:
    • Oil production systems
    • Cement production system
    • Semiconductor manufacturing tools
    • Computer servers
    • Coal mines
    • etc.
  • Healthcare (diabetes data analytics)
  • Transportation simulation and optimization
  • LCD optical design
  • Blockchain and collaborative learning
  • Statistical risk analysis in project management
  • Power grid optimization

In addition to the broad and deep industry knowledge, I have years’ of people and project management experience both in Japan and the US. I have done much work also in intellectual property management, handling many non-disclosure agreements, technology licence agreements, and service contracts.

I am a Japanese citizen and a U.S. Green Card holder. I am open to new job opportunities wherever I can make a difference. Back in Japan, I was known as a collector of antique computer keyboards. You can check some of my collection of mechanical keyboards on my YouTube channel. I also run a website on the history of modern computer keyboards (in Japanese). Enjoy! 

Education

  • Ph.D. in Physics, The University of Tokyo, Japan, 2000.
    • Thesis: “Theoretical Study on Nonlocal Effects in Resonant X-Ray Emission Spectra of Strongly-Correlated Systems”
    • Supervisor: Prof. Kotani Akio
  • M.Sc. in Physics, University of Tokyo, Japan, 1997.
  • B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering, Tohoku University, Japan, 1993.

Employment

I am a Japanese citizen and a U.S. permanent resident.

  • Today-07/12/2016: IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
    • Senior Technical Staff Member
      • Lead customer engagements and provide the team with technical guidance.
      • Play the role of technical evangelist to influence IBM’s technical roadmap based on a broad range of experiences on real business.
      • Perform basic and applied research in AI to publish research outcomes in world premier conferences and journals as well as patents.
  •  07/11/2016-09/04/2013: IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center (on international assignment from IBM Japan)
    • Senior Technical Staff Member (09/2014-07/2016).
      • Led a variety of customer engagements to success as the technical leader.
      • Developed innovative machine learning methods for industrial sensor data and published six lead-authored papers in the world’s premier conference and journals in AI.
    • Manager, Service Delivery & Risk Analytics (09/2013-09/2014).
      • Engaged in people, projects, and research strategy management of the team.
      • Proposed novel AI-based approaches to IT (information technology) system development.
      • Awarded two Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards by IBM Corporation for that work.
  • 09/03/2013-04/01/2000: IBM Research – Tokyo
    • Manager, Analytics & Optimization (09/2010-09/2013).
      • Supervised the entire area of AI at IBM Research – Tokyo (except for teams specific to speech and text analytics).
      • Successfully established an organizational management model that strikes an optimal balance business contributions and academic reputation.
      • Proposed a new AI-driven business strategy and led numerous customer engagements. Major successful projects include the development of an intelligent transportation system in Kenya and a health monitoring system for ocean-going vessels. The latter won the General Manager Award of IBM Japan.
    • Senior Researcher (2010-2013), Advisory Researcher (2008-2010), Staff Researcher (2005-2008)
      • Led basic and applied research in AI as a technical leader.
      • Launched the project of Sensor Data Analytics as a promising area of AI applications.
      • Major research achievements include the establishment of a dependency-based anomaly detection method, which was awarded the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award later.
    • Researcher (2000-2005)
      • Engaged in improving existing IBM products using mathematical science technologies.
      • Major contributions include a significant improvement of luminance uniformity of IBM ThinkPad displays and the development anomaly detection solution of computer systems.

Honors & Awards

  • 2018
    • Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, IBM Corporation (for Business and Technical Leadership in IBM Anomaly Analyzer for Correlational Data)
  • 2017
    • Best Author Award, The Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (For his article titled “Predicting project risks using latent trait model”)
  • 2016
    • Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, IBM Corporation, (for End-to-end Contract Profitability Analytics for ITS)
    • Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, IBM Corporation (for Financial Risk Analytics for Strategic Outsourcing)
  • 2015
    • Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, IBM Corporation (for Fundamental Contributions to Anomaly Detection)
  • 2013
    • General Manager Award, IBM Japan (for successful delivery of vessel monitoring system to ClassNK)
  • 2007
    • Winner, ICDM Data Mining Contest, The 2007 Seventh IEEE International Conference on Data Mining
  • 2006
    • JSAI Annual Conference Award, The 20th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
  • 2004
    • JSAI Annual Conference Award, The 18th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence

Executive/Board Membership

  • Today-2013: IBM Academy of Technology.
  • 2015-2011: Secretary, Machine Learning Activity Group of the Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (JSIAM-ML).
  • 2014-2012: Board of Directors, The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence.
  • 2010-2008: Vice Chair, Technical Committee on Information-Based Induction Sciences (IBIS), IEICE.

Academic Community Services

Government grant reviewer

  • Council for the Humanities, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, 2013.

Journal editor

Senior/advisory committee member

  • Senior Program Committee Member, 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-21), 2021.
  • Publicity Chair, The 9th IEEE International Conference on Big Knowledge (IEEE ICBK 2018), 2018.
  • Senior Program Committee Member, 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-15), 2015.
  • Program Chair, The 12th Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences (IBIS 2009), 2009.

Technical program committee member

  • 2021
    • The Thirty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-21)
    • 2021 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM 2021)
    • 2021 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2021)
    • The 13th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2020)
    • 2021 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2021)
    • The 6th Outlier Detection and Description Workshop (ODD 2021)
  • 2020
    • 2020 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (IEEE ICDM 2020)
    • The 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-20)
    • The Thirty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-20)
    • The 12th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2020)
    • 2020 International Conference on Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems (BlockSys 2020)
  • 2019
    • 2019 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (IEEE ICDM 2019)
    • The 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19; selected as Distinguished Program Committee Member)
    • The Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 19)
    • The 28th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2019)
    • 2019 International Conference on Blockchain and Trustworthy Systems (BlockSys 2019)
    • The 11th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2019)
    • The 16th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2019)
  • 2018
    • 2018 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (IEEE ICDM 2018)
    • The 10th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2018)
    • The 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018)
    • The 2018 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2018)
  • 2017
    • The 9th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2017)
    • The 15th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2017)
  • 2016
    • The IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2016)
  • 2015
    • The 14th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2015)
  • 2013
    • The 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2013)
    • The First International Workshop on Tera-Scale In-Core Data Mining (TIDM 2013)
  • 2012
    • The 4th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2012)
  • 2011
    • 2011 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM 2011)
    • The 3rd Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML 2011)
    • IEEE International Workshop on Data Mining for Service (DMS2011)
  • 2010
    • IEEE International Workshop on Data Mining for Service (DMS2010)
    • International conference on IT and Business Intelligence (ITBI-10)
    • The 13th Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences (IBIS 2010)
  • 2009
    • JSAI 2009 Conference and Workshops, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
  • 2008
    • JSAI 2008 Conference and Workshops, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
    • The 11th Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences (IBIS 2008)
  • 2007
    • The 10th Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences (IBIS 2007)

Reviewer services

  • 2021
    • ICML 2021
    • NeurIPS 2021
    • AIMA 2021
    • IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
    • IEEE Transactions on Reliability
    • Pattern Recognition
    • ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data
  • 2020
    • NeurIPS 2020
    • Pattern Recognition,  IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Machine Learning, Frontiers in Big Data
    • IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
    • CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology

+ Many others…