Members

Project ResearcherWataru Kumagai

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Wataru Kumagai is a project researcher in the Knowledge Computing Group. His research interests include research automation and artificial general intelligence. He received his Ph.D. degree from Tohoku University in 2013. His career includes positions at Kanagawa University, RIKEN, and the University of Tokyo.

Project ResearcherTomoya Takahashi

Tomoya Takahashi is a project researcher in the robotics group. He received his Ph.D. degree in Information sciences from the Tohoku University in 2024. His research interests include robotic mechanisms made of soft material.
From January to March 2023, he worked at Stanford University as a visiting student researcher. 2022, RSJ The 37th Young Investigation Excellence Award. 2021, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Japan Joint Chapter Young Award.

Project ResearcherYuki Kuroda

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Yuki Kuroda is a project researcher in the robotics group. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Electro-Communications in 2024. 2017 Aug.-2018 Mar., Visiting graduate student at Morphology, Evolution & Cognition Laboratory in the University of Vermont.

His research focuses on human-inspired robotics (myoelectric prosthetic hand, soft robotics, motion learning, artificial life).

Project ResearcherTosho Hirasawa

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Tosho Hirasawa is a project research in the Knowledge Computing Group. His research interests include natural language processing , multimodal learning, and machine translation. He received his Ph.D. degree from Tokyo Metropolitan University in 2024 under the guidance of Prof. Mamoru Komachi. 2020, the 1st place at Video-guided Machine Translation Challenge 2020, the first workshop on Advances in Language and Vision Research (ALVR).

Principal InvestigatorAtsushi Hashimoto

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Atsushi Hashimoto is a principal investigator in the knowledge computing group. He received his Ph.D. degree in informatics from Kyoto University, Japan, in 2013. His current research interests are cross-modal understanding of assembly and cooking tasks, transfer learning, and learning-based combinatorial optimization.

Senior ResearcherKazutoshi Tanaka

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Kazutoshi Tanaka is a senior researcher in the robotics group. He received his Ph.D. degree in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo in 2017. 2017-2019, Postdoctoral fellow at department of Mechano-Informatics in the University of Tokyo.

His research focuses on Robotics performing sports (human-robot Interaction, mechanics, control, motion learning). 2018, RSJ Young Investigation Excellence Award. 2018, INNO of the Strategic Information and Communications R&D Promotion Programme (SCOPE) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan.

Principal InvestigatorMasashi Hamaya

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Masashi Hamaya is a principal investigator in the robotics group. His research focuses on robotics (soft robotics, human-robot interaction, robot learning).

He received his Ph.D. degree in Engineering from Osaka University in 2019. 2014-2019, Intern student at department of Brain Robot Interface in ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories. 2017 Jul.-2017 Sep., Visiting scholar at Robotics Institute in Carnegie Mellon University. 2018, IEEE Kansai Section Student Paper Award. 2019, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Japan Joint Chapter Young Award.

Senior ResearcherTatsunori Taniai

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Tatsunori Taniai is a senior researcher in the knowledge computing group. His research interests include geometric and photometric 3D vision and physics-informed machine learning.

He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo in 2017. During 2017-2019, he was with RIKEN AIP Center as a postdoctoral researcher. He was awarded for Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship in 2015, and IPSJ Yamashita SIG Research Award in 2018. He was recognized as an outstanding reviewer by CVPR 2018, 2020, 2023 and ECCV 2020.

Vice President for ResearchYoshitaka Ushiku

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Yoshitaka Ushiku is a research organizer/principal investigator in the interaction group.

He received his B.E., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tokyo in 2009, 2011, and 2014, respectively. His research interests lie in computer vision and natural language processing, with a particular interest in AI for Science.

Research EngineerKazumi Kasaura

Kazumi Kasaura is currently a research engineer in the integrated interaction group. His expertise includes algorithms and pure mathematics. He received B.S. and M.S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Tokyo in 2017 and 2019. In 2019, he interned as an engineer at Preferred Networks, Inc.

Project ResearcherRyo Igarashi

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Ryo Igarashi is a project researcher in the knowledge computing group. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Tokyo in 2009. After working as a postdoctoral researcher in JAEA and ISSP, he was a project lecturer at the University of Tokyo. His research interests originate from simulating quantum materials and are currently centered on high performance computing, not only on implementation but also algorithms improvements.

Principal InvestigatorShigeo Yoshida

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Shigeo Yoshida is a principal investigator in the integrated interaction group. He received his Ph.D. in Information Studies, master’s degree in Arts and Sciences, and bachelor’s degree in Engineering from The University of Tokyo in 2017, 2014, and 2012 respectively.
His research interest involves a broad area of Human-Computer Interaction. He has been especially focusing on designing interactions based on the mechanisms of perception and cognition of our body.

Division ManagerTakashi Nishioka

Takashi Nishioka is the manager of the near future design division. As a senior manager at one of the country's largest telecommunications company, he was involved in technology strategy, business management, and new business development. In particular, he led business development in the advanced technology areas of drones, IoT, satellite technology, MaaS, smart agriculture, and smart tourism. In addition, as COO of a drone solution start-up company, he led the management strategy, alliance strategy with major companies, establishment of management structure toward IPO, and capital policy.

He received his B.E. degree from Doshisha University in 1998 and, he received his M.B.A degree from the Mason School of Business, the College of William and Mary in 2009. Besides, he was the visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Project Design in 2020.

Senior ResearcherTadashi Kozuno

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Tadashi Kozuno is a senior researcher in the integrated interaction group. His research interests include neuroscience and the theory of decision making, such as reinforcement learning (RL), multi-agent systems, and game theory.
He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta, working on RL and game theory. He received a PhD degree from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in 2020. During his PhD, he interned at DeepMind Paris. Prior to his PhD, he studied neuroscience in Osaka university.

Senior ResearcherCristian C. Beltran-Hernandez

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Cristian C Beltran-Hernandez is a senior researcher in the robotics group. His research interests include robotics manipulation through machine learning techniques and task/motion planning.
He received his Ph.D. degree in Engineering from Osaka University in 2022. During his Ph.D., he worked on joint research projects with Fujifilm on topics related to robotic assembly automation with compliance control. He also researched robot manipulation as an intern at OMRON SINIC X from 2021 to 2023. He participated in the 2022 Google Summer of Code program with the organization MoveIt.

Project ResearcherShohei Tanaka

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Shohei Tanaka is a project researcher in the knowledge computing group. His research interest lies in natural language processing for dialogue system, multimodal interaction, and robotics.

He received his Doctor of Engineering from Nara Institute of Science and Technology in 2023. 2021-2023, Junior Research Associate at Guardian Robot Project, RIKEN. 2019, Best Paper Award, The 1st Workshop NLP for Conversational AI ACL 2019 Workshop (ConvAI).

Senior researcherKuniaki Saito

Kuniaki Saito is a senior researcher in the knowledge computing group, specializing in domain adaptation, domain generalization, and vision-language models. He earned his Ph.D. degree from Boston University in 2023 under the guidance of Prof. Kate Saenko. During his doctoral studies, he also interned at Google Cloud AI, Facebook Reality Lab, and Nvidia.