What led him to join NICT
Once in the business world due to a desire not to have any regrets in the future
At university, I was conducting research on cell phones and information networks, and upon entering the doctoral program, I spent two years as a researcher at a university in Finland. After that, I returned to Japan as a JSPS researcher, obtained a doctoral degree, and after a one-year post-doctoral fellowship, I started working for a foreign management strategy consulting firm. Finnish students, even those majoring in IT fields, were not only doing research on IT but also talking about business development and operating profit figures. This is because Finnish universities require students to specify a major and a minor, and many of them specify business as their minor even if their major is IT. This was a situation that was hard to find in Japan at the time. I did not want to have regrets in the future if I continued to pursue only research without knowing the rest of the world, so I jumped into the world of business.
When I turned 30 years old and decided on my own path, I knew that I wanted to create a global social infrastructure and system that could be passed on to the next generation, based on my core strengths in information and telecommunications technology. That is why I changed my job to NICT, which at the time was recruiting for personnel to promote international standardization activities.
Job details
It is important to pursue the maximization of results for the entire laboratory. Fostering the younger generation as well.
Currently, while performing administrative duties as the Associate Director of the Cybersecurity Laboratory, I am also leading the research and development team that is using AI to automate and improve the efficiency of cybersecurity operations.
In addition to various administrative procedures, my daily duties include considering and coordinating the direction and themes of research for the entire group, preparing the environment to maximize the output of the entire team, and coordinating information with related departments. Each researcher and technical staff member is a leading expert in his or her field, so they are all more knowledgeable in that field than anyone else. That said, we cannot maximize the output of the entire team if we simply leave all research to each individual. I believe it is important to maximize the results of the laboratory as a whole by cultivating the team’s consensus on the direction in which the research should go, and by discussing it together with the researchers and technicians while polishing my own research and development skills.
Another important issue is the training of the younger generation. I myself have been given the opportunity to advocate, devise, and experience what I want to do, such as study abroad, international standardization activities, and joint research with universities with which I want to collaborate. All of these experiences have been valuable, and I believe that I would not be where I am today without them. Now, I want to be on the side of providing opportunities for the younger generation to do and experience what they want to do, and I am trying to create an environment for them to do so. At the same time, I also want them to take on the challenge of attending Tier-I/Tier-II international conferences, and I try to actively encourage them to do so.
Advantages of working at NICT and the future
I would like to build a social infrastructure that can be passed on to the next generation. NICT is the environment in which we can achieve this.
I would like to build a social infrastructure that I can confidently pass on to my children and the next generation. I believe that NICT can make this happen. This is why I have been and will continue to work at NICT. I believe that there are many people at NICT who share similar values. I also think it is an advantage to work at NICT because all researchers grow from yesterday to today and from today to tomorrow, so we don’t have the same stories every day, which stimulates our brains.
Currently, the AI×Cybersecurity R&D team has more than 15 members including part-time workers, but I believe that the team needs to grow even larger in the future. However, this is a problem not only for the team but also for the entire Cybersecurity Laboratory. Due to the nature of the field of cybersecurity, we absolutely cannot afford to have any accidents. Therefore, our policy is not to hire people in a hurry just because we don’t have enough but to take time to grow our team. We believe that this will ultimately increase the speed of our research activities.
