[Research and Society Activities] [Laboratory Activities] [Management Jobs] [Private Events] [ver.2014] [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 2015 annual report as my season's greetings to my friends.
Thinking of you from Japan in early 2016
--- My topics in 2015 ---
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 takagi
design.kyushu-u.ac.jp
URL http://www.design.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~takagi/
Research and Social Activities
I attended three domestic conferences on evolutionary computation and five
international conferences. I played roles of General co-Chairs of two
conferences held in China and on our campus, a plenary speaker at a conference
held in Kochi, India, a special session organizer at a conference held in Hong
Kong, and an organizing committee member of a conference held in Cape Town,
South Africa. SoCPaR2015 conference that we organized on our campus collected 59
participants from 20 countries and 37 domestic participants.
Besides the above conferences, I gave seminar talks/lectures at Shanghai Maritime University, Iwate Prefectural University, Hong Kong City University, and a domestic symposium. I also gave a lecture for Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia using web-conferencing.
We proposed a new concept, acceptable degrees, for practical design of multi-objective optimization in last September at a domestic conference. It helps to embed designer's a priori knowledge in auto-search in an object space without using Pareto ranks. We are expecting that it gives an impact to research on evolutionary multi-objective optimization/many-objective optimization and started joint research with my ex-students at National Institute of Technology, Akita College and the University of Aizu.
I am a volunteer serving mainly for IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society (SMC) as the SMC Japan Chapter Chair
(2014-2015), Chair of SMC Technical Committee on Soft Computing, and
Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cybernetic. I was elected as the
SMC Japan Chapter Chair (2016-2017) and SMC Board of Governors member
(2016-2018) through elections held in last autumn.
Laboratory Management
Two bachelor students joined to our lab from October with a half year delay, and now our lab consists of a doctoral student (D2), four Master students (a M2 and three M1), and two bachelor students.
Besides lab seminars, we organize doctoral seminars with two other universities using web-conferencing.
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 24 students from the world, and provided 90 min. * 15 times lectures and lab works. We are going to have its 2016 version in this summer, too.
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 Hasanuddin University in Indonesia in February, 2015 and at Bandung Institute of Technology and Gadjah Mad University in November, 2015. We sent three lecturers and gave three or four lectures and a talk of studying experience in Japan. It needs much efforts to recruit non-Japanese students who are willing to enroll to our doctoral program.
I am serving an External Academic Advisor of Hong Kong City University in
2015-2017. My role is to assess the educational program of one of their Dept.s.
I admired their university's energy for the assessment. They sent me not only
syllabus but also examination question sheets, its scored answer sheets, and
other many documents and asked me to evaluate them and point out how to improve
them. Especially in the first year, they ask to visit their university and
discuss on them. Due to their volumes, I have to read these English documents
for several days and make a report for required items. I combined my visit to
this university with SMC2015 conference held at this university and discussed on
the report with their faculty members. At least, our university does not spend
time and money for such external assessment in Dept. level.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) changed their policy for internationalizing Japanese universities from recruiting many non-Japanese students to sending many Japanese students to abroad, and many Japanese universities are actively developing student exchanging program. To send our students to universities in abroad, we must accept the same number of their students to our university, which means that we must develop course program given in English at the same time. I visited the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University in the end of October, and Prof. Y. Tan of the School visited our School, and we checked each syllabus and discussed to develop student exchanging program between two Schools besides exisiting univerity-univerity program. We are trying to make a contract of the exchaning program for bachelor students in 2016.
University Management Jobs
I spent many hours for university administrative jobs as the Chair of Dept. of Art and Information Design, School of Design in 2014-2015 and the Chair of Human Science Course / Human Science International Course in 2015. Also, I had to spend time for similar administrative jobs as the Chair of Student Support Committee, members of the Working Group (WG) on reconstructing Departments and WG on assessment of moving campus. Even there was a day when whole day was occupied by meetings except lunch time.
There are surely many administrative jobs according to our age. Good news is that my terms of Dept. Chair and Course Chair end at the end of March, 2016. I hope that these load in 2016 Fiscal Year decreases though I may be assigned to other similar jobs.
Private Events
2015 is the 20th year since I started working for a university, and Kyushu University gave me one-week holidays for refreshment. It was not easy to find continuous holidays in my calendar due to my course lectures, Chairs' jobs for Dept. and Graduate School Course. Finally, I took it in March and took private lessons at a Chinese language school in Shanghai. This is the second lesson since I studied Chinese for three years in late 1980's. Since most students at the language school are Japanese business persons and their family, and business persons come to the school after their jobs and their families invite teachers at their homes, I am only a student in daytime. I could fully enjoy long conversations. However, I was shocked to know that I soon forget several new phrases that I should have been able to memorize quickly.
Our younger daughter started working in Hokkaido from last April. My wife, her father, and I Hokkaido in July, 2015. We visited her home, the most famous zoo in Japan, and old town in Spapporo where my wife's father spent in his childhood.
Our elder daughter engaged in September and met her fiancé's parents. They became a married couple in December.
My wife and I become 60 years old in 2016. Two daughters became independent from us, and we must face turning into our old ages. We two have no serious health problems except wreaking our short-term memory.
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