Educational Activities

Since 2021 academic year is my last working year at Kyushu University, I did not accept new graduate students to my lab this year, and my lab consists of only three Chinese students of Master Program. They are tacking large-scale evolutionary optimization, strong constraint evolutionary optimization, and interactive evolutionary computation with multiple users. One of them will continue his theme in the Doctoral Program of Hokkaido University from April, 2022.

School of Design, Kyushu University reorganized in April, 2020, and Design Futures Course where I am teaching now consists of the first and second year students in 2021. The first year students mainly study liberal arts, while the second year students start studying the major subjects, which resulted that I came to give them new course lectures (Advanced Information and Life Science I & II) as my first and last lectures in 2021 academic calendar.

As my international educational activity, I played a role as a member of the Committee on PhD Qualify Examination of Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University in Israel, reviewed a PhD research proposal, and attended a student presentation and committee evaluation in May, 2021.

goto top

---

Research Activities

Our on-going research, "large-scale evolutionary optimization," has a unique originality that reduces the number of variables using sparse modeling, one of statistical machine learning techniques, and introduces a new optimization strategy taking account of concentration on the sphere. I hope that this research is expanded as a doctoral research of my current student at Hokkaido University.

My on-going Scientific Research granted by JSPS was originally scheduled to be terminated in March, 2022 when I retire, but I decided to extend it one more year. This is the main reason why I made business trip to two my cooperative researchers of this project, Associate Professor Y. Pei of the University of Aizu and Assistant Professor J. Yu of Niigata University, in November. All conferences and meetings in my areas became on-line virtual conferences since COVID-19 pandemic started, and this was my first business trip since then. Both of them were my ex-students.

International conference on Cybernetics, CYBCONF2021, was held in June, and its post-event, Cybernetics Summer School, followed it. I gave on-line lectures on Humanized Technologies: It is not just about performance but cooperation with human KANSEI and Statistical Tests for Computational Intelligence for three hours. I also gave the same on-line lecture on statistical tests for one hour at the 20th Evolutional Computation domestic meeting in September.

goto top

---

---

My Retirement and After Then

Frequently asked common question just before retirement would be "what are you going to do after your retirement?" I will retire from Kyushu University on 31 March, 2022 but work for this university as a Post-doctoral Fellow in 2022 academic year (April - March). I am going to work for 12 hours per week. Kyushu University has a rather strict rule for hiring employees whose age is more than 65 years old, checks exceptional cases at a Personnel Committee at our headquarter, and requests the approval of an executive. Fortunately, my situation satisfies the condition of this exceptional case, and my one-year part-time employment was approved. I am going to complete two Scientific Research granted by JSPS in 2022 academic year. This one year would be my approach run for my second life from 2023.

Retired professors must make their offices empty by the end of March for the next office users. I have moved out books and discarded old documents little by little from 2021 to complete it by my retirement. However, an unexpected plan of renovating my office in February was arisen and my one-year employment from April was approved in December, so that I came to move to a new office in the adjoining building in January. My desk will be in the Research Center for Applied Perceptual Science where I am serving as its Steering Committee member.

goto top

---

---

Private Issues: Hobbies and Health

(a) Hobbies

 have continued Nordic-Walk three or four days per week as I wrote in my 2020 annual report. I usually walk around five or six kilometers for about one hour at a swing trot. As nobody is walking in resident areas in the dark evening, a COVID-19 mask is not necessary during this walking. For traffic safety reason, LED lights are attached to my two Nordic-walk poles, and I saw some dogs with the same LED lights for dog-walking. I have done this exercise by encouraging myself for my heath rather than my hobby.

I climbed mountains six or seven times in 2021. It would not be physical training for health because of just a few numbers per year, but it is quite good for my mental break. Unlike the above Nordic-walk exercise, this is my very enjoyable hobby. I climbed several mountains in Hokkaido Island in continuous three days in 2020 as I wrote in my annual report, and I climbed Mt. Kai-Koma and Mt. Senjyo in the South Japan Alps for 3 days and 2 night with a mountain tent. It was really mountains of 3000 meters level after long years and mountain climbing and sleeping in a tent after more than 30 years. I had frequently climbed mountains of 3000 meters level in the so-called Japan Alps in 1980's, but high mountains that I have climbed after I moved to Kyushu Island in 1995 are only in the 1700 meters level. Only one exception is (maybe) Mt. Tochal of 3965 meters near Teheran City climbed in 2008, and the following case was Mt. Asahidake of 2291 meters in 2020. I was excited by mountains of the 3000 meters level and climbing with a tent after long brank years.

(b) Health

The last topic is a health issue. The first one is COVID-19 as well. As my wife and I received vaccination in June and I have paid attention to COVID-19 including remote-based working, we have not caught it yet. It pasted a half year since our second vaccination and concentration of our antibody seemed to become half．We are waiting the third one scheduled in February.

It is well known that vaccination prevents the aggravation of the COVID-19 condition even if we are infected with it. According to the report of an expert in infectious diseases at the French Senate on 21 December, 2021, the ratio of unvaccinated French adults is about 10% among French population, but 43% of hospitalized patients is unvaccinated; this means that the risk of unvaccinated people is 6.8 times higher than that of vaccinated people. Aged people including me should increase concentration of antibody by booster vaccination to prevent advancing in severity and an aftereffect of COVID-19. According to the report of Toyama University Hospital at the end of December, concentration of antibody after the third vaccination became 9.5 time of that after the second one; we can expect its big effect more than just recovery.

The second health topic is related with cancer. I took a PET-CT inspection when I underwent an annual clinical survey in September, and ground glass attenuation (GGA) of about 5 mm was found in CT images. It may become lung fiber cancer in the future though PET images showed that it has not become cancer. When GGA becomes bigger and white solid nodule appears in the GGA, it is lung fiber cancer in the stage IA1. At this moment, we do not know whether it will disappear or become cancer. However, I am happy to know that such part to be monitored was found in a quite early stage. My whole thyroid was removed because of papillary cancer 16 years ago, and PET inspection at my annual clinical survey detected this cancer of only 7 mm. Since papillary cancer less than 20 mm is categorized in the stage 1, detection of 7 mm cancer is in a quite early stage. My policy is to spend money for clinical survey to detect disease in early stage than buying life insurance for post-disease.

goto top