[Research and Society Activities] [Laboratory Activities] [Management Jobs] [Private Events] [ver.2013] [ver.2012] [ver.2011] [ver.2010] [ver.2009] [ver.2008] [ver.2007] [ver.2006] [ver.2005] [ver.2004]
Dear my friends in the world,
I made this 2014 annual report as my season's greetings to my friends.
Thinking of you from Japan in early 2015
--- My topics in 2014 ---
Hideyuki TAKAGI (Faculty of Design, Kyushu University)
(worked concurrently for Research Center for Applied Perceptual Science)
4-9-1, Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540 Japan
TEL & FAX <+81>92-553-4555
e-mail 
URL http://www.design.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~takagi/
Research and Social Activities
I attended four domestic conferences in March, Sept., and Dec., in 2014; three of them were conferences sponsored by the Japanese Society of Evolutionary Computation where I am mainly related in these several years. I also attended five international conferences in July, Oct., Nov., and Dec., too. The conference in Dec. was an on-line conference realized by a web seminar system, and I gave a keynote speech on the research directions of interactive evolutionary computation from my office on the first conference day. Registered audience received URL to the on-line conference and can audit presentations, make questions using text chat during presentations, and presenters answer to the questions during their time and later by e-mails
Although I am not a statistician, I am a user who must use statistical tests for my research. My tutorial on statistical tests does not mention mathematical aspects of the tests but is quite practical and explains what statistical tests we should use for a given case and how to use them. Based on my slides used at my tutorials at interntional conferences three times, I gave this tutorial at Tokyo Metropolitan University in March and wrote three tutorial series for No. 8, 10, and 12 of the journal of a domestic society in 2014. The slides in English and three tutorial articles in Japanese are downloadable from my web page
I stopped by at University of California at Berkeley (UCB) on the way back from an international conference, SMC2014, held in San Diego in October and introduced what research I am doing and my views at a BISC Roundtable Meeting organized by Prof. L. A. Zadeh. It was a somehow academic salon; eight participants gathered around a roundtable in a small office for visitors/students and discussed with me on what I am doing. One hour had passed before I knew it.
Prof. Zadeh was a host when I was a visiting researcher at UCB in 1991 - 1993. I heard that he was the eldest UCB professor. In spite of his age, he is quite active; he gave a plenary talk at SMC2014 some days ago, has organized BISC Roundtable Meeting at UCB, and has sent messages to his BISC mailing list. He accidentally dropped down from a stage at SMC2014, and we blanched to see the scene. His plenary was cancelled on the day and he was sent to a hospital, but he gave his plenary talk in the lunch break on the next day. I had to take my hat off to him for his activities of 94 years old!
One technical problem that I had tried to solve but could not due to the lack of my mathematical capability was solved in 2014. When Research Center for Applied Perceptual Science that I also hold a post held a seminar, I explained the problem to two mathematicians during its reception. They sent me back its solution after several e-mail communications. How quickly mathematicians solved it! The possibility that evolutionary computation becomes fast by combining the solution, and I am going to tackle the research in 2015. I presented the solution at Evolutionary Computation Symposium 2014 held in December with four author names of three universities, and our presentation received an `invalid' Best Poster Award. All 64 presentations of this symposium were poster presentations, and participants voted to the best poster. The Best Poster Award was chosen among all presentations previously but was changed to limit to presentations by young authors recent years. However, there were many participants who did not know this change and voted to our poster presentation, and we collected the most voting. Of course, they became wasted votes, unfortunately.
I am a volunteer serving mainly for IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society (SMC) as the SMC Japan Chapter Chair, Chair of SMC Technical Committee on Soft Computing, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cybernetic. I played a General co-Chair of two international conferences held in Okinawa in November and a member of Advisory Boards / Organizing Committees of seven international conferences.
Laboratory Management
One bachelor student graduated in September with a half year delay, and a doctoral student from Thailand and two research students from China joined to my lab in October. My lab in 2014 fiscal year consists of one bachelor student, two research students, two master students, a doctoral student, and myself. Although I do not know how many bachelor students join to my lab from April, beginning of 2015 fiscal year, we are going to have one research student, three master students, and a doctoral student at least.
Educational Activities
I proposed to organize a Summer School sponsored by Human Science International Course of Graduate School of Design where I teach, and we have organized it since 2011. Our Int. Course is a doctoral program in English for non-Japanese students, which means that we must recruit Maters students from the world. However, it is impossible until students in the world know that we have such degree program in English that they can obtain doctorates without Japanese language capability and understand what education and research are conducted at the course. The Summer School is an event for publicity of the international course and recruitment, and we invite students with our financial supports. Almost Japanese universities hold Open Campuses for recruiting high school students. We may say that our Summer School is its overseas version. We got financial support from two governmental organizations, invited 26 students from the world, and provided 90 min. * 15 times lectures and lab works. We are going to have its 2015 version in this summer.
We cannot invite many students to the Summer School due to limited budget. It is one idea to hold a mini-Summer School outside of Japan and send seminar lecturers from our international course. We held a one-day seminar at Gadjah Mad University in Indonesia in March, 2014 because the number of enrolled students to our international course and students applying to our Summer School from this university is the most. We sent three lecturers and gave four lectures and a talk of studying experience in Japan. I gave two lectures on computational intelligence and statistical tests.
Nowadays, almost Japanese universities make efforts to recruit excellent high school students, and Kyushu University is not its exception. Our Undergraduate School of Design prepares a menu of more than 70 lectures for high schools and sends professors according to the requests from high schools. I gave lectures at four high schools in West Japan in 2014. My topics that they chose were "Human KANSEI + Computational Intelligence = Design" and "From Gramophone to Digital Audio that are Understandable with High School Physics."
University Management Jobs
Kyushu University was selected as one of 13 universities of governmental Top Global University Project, and big changes are on-going in our education systems based on a keyword of "global". Following the change, we are discussing to reform our School of Design, and the numbers of meetings that I must attend increased. As I am the Chair of Dept. of Art and Information Design in 2014 - 2015, the numbers of meetings that I must attend increased, too. Under these conditions, I feel that my load for university management really increased. One sample my schedule of busy day was that I spent five hours for such kinds of four meetings and one Faculty Development meeting and had a lab seminar among them.
Private Events
Prof. & Mrs. Honda and Prof. & Mr. Imaizumi came to Berkeley in October when I stopped by there mentioned in the above, and we met there after an interval of more than 20 years. When I was a visiting researcher at UCB in 1991 -1993, they were visitors, too. When I make a business trip to Tokyo and have time, I sometimes met them and Mr. Nishio of SONY who was also a visiting researcher in those days. When we met last March, we talked a plan of visiting Berkeley and seeing Prof. & Mrs. Zadeh and decided to go to Berkeley in October. Although I have visited some time there in these 20 years, Albany and Berkeley were places full of memories for us.
My younger daughter will graduate a Master course in this March and start to work from this April. Now, my wife and I reached the age when we focus on designing our life plan after finishing loan of our apartment and children's school expenses.
I have no specific healthy problems except a one-day surgery in last March. Although blood chemistry study at my annual thorough physical examination found some troubles and a hospital requests re-examination every times in these two or three years, all data of the re-examination at my family doctor are within normal ranges. The ranges may depend on hospitals, and I do not care the blood test results. goto top