Introduction

I am working on data mining and machine learning as part of AI Science, IBM Research. My ~20 years of research experience covers a variety of topics such as

  • Anomaly/change detection/diagnosis from industrial sensor data,
  • Trajectory mining,
  • Questionnaire data analysis,
  • Collaborative/multi-task learning and blockchain,
  • Explainability in AI.

Although most of those works may technically fall into the category of applied research, I always enjoy modeling complex real-world business problems from scratch and formalizing them in a solvable form, rather than just “applying” existing methods. I have authored two machine learning textbooks on anomaly detection, which are among the best-selling machine learning books in Japan. Here are some of the keywords from the project I was involved in the past:

  • 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.

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

Academic Community Services

Government grant reviewer

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

Journal editor

Senior/advisory committee member

  • 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
    • 2021 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM 2021)
  • 2020
    • 2020 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (IEEE ICDM 2020)
    • The 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-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)