Introduction:I am the Senior Principal Researcher (Leader of the Media Interaction Group until September 30, 2016 / Senior Research Scientist until March 31, 2009 / Prime Senior Researcher (renamed, equivalent to Principal Researcher) until March 31, 2024 / Principal Researcher until October 31, 2024), Department of Information Technology and Human Factors at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), which is the Japan's largest public research organization that was set up on April 1st, 2001 and combined 15 research institutes, including the former Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) where I worked from April 1st, 1998 to March 31st, 2001.
I have served concurrently as a Researcher of Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO) ("Information and Human Activity" research area), Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) from October 1st, 2000 to September 30th, 2003, a Professor (Cooperative Graduate School Program) of the Master's and Doctoral Programs in Intelligent and Mechanical Interaction Systems, Degree programs in Systems and Information Engineering (SIE), University of Tsukuba since April 1st, 2005 (Associate Professor until December 31, 2015), a Visiting Professor of the Research Center for Statistical Machine Learning, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics since April 1st, 2008 (Visiting Associate Professor until March 31, 2009), a Project Manager (PM) of the MITOU Program (the Exploratory IT Human Resources Project) by the Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) from May 1st, 2009 to March 31st, 2017, the Research Supervisor (Program Officer) of ACT-I (Advanced Information and Communication Technology for Innovation) within Strategic Basic Research Programs by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) from June 1st, 2016 to March 31st, 2022, and the Program Officer (PO) of the FOREST (Fusion Oriented REsearch for disruptive Science and Technology) program by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) from August 1st, 2023.
I received a B.E. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 1993, an M.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1995, and a Doctor of Engineering degree in Electronics, Information and Communication Engineering in 1998, all from Waseda University (Yoichi Muraoka Laboratory). I received 69 awards, including Tenth Japan Academy Medal, Tenth JSPS PRIZE, DoCoMo Mobile Science Awards "Excellence Award in Fundamental Science", Ichimura Prize in Science for Distinguished Achievement, Funai Achievement Award, and The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of MEXT "Young Scientists' Prize".
Professional Activities / History of Attending International Conferences / Reports on the Media
Visiting Researchers and Internship Students
News! (2024/11/01):
(New)
On November 1st, 2024, I was promoted to the first Senior Principal Researcher at AIST. The Senior Principal Researcher was established in 2024 as the highest career path for conducting research and is positioned as equivalent to the Executive Officer.
News! (2023/08/23):
(New)
Starting from August 1st, 2023, I serve concurrently as the Program Officer (PO) of the FOREST (Fusion Oriented REsearch for disruptive Science and Technology) program by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
News! (2023/04/17):
(New)
On April 17, 2023, I was given The Ichimura Prize in Science for Distinguished Achievement by the Ichimura Foundation for New Technology.
The 55th Ichimura Prize Presentation Ceremony was held on April 17, 2023 at the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo in the presence of Her Imperial Highness Princess Akiko. I would like to express my gratitude to everybody who has supported our research.
News! (2023/03/22):
(New)
On March 22, 2023, we were given the 38th Telecommunications Advancement Foundation Award (Telecom Interdisciplinary Research Award) by the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation. The awarded paper is "Kiite Cafe: A Web Service for Getting Together Virtually to Listen to Music" presented at ISMIR 2021 (22nd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference).
News! (2022/11/14):
(New)
I was invited to give a keynote talk at the 9th Symposium of the Japan Data Scientist Society on November 14th, 2022.
News! (2021/06/08):
(New)
I received the Fellow from The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) on June 8th, 2021.
News! (2021/03/11):
(New)
I received the Fellow from The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) on March 11th, 2021.
News! (2020/11/24):
(New)
Our five-year research project "Building a Trusted Explorable Recommendation Foundation Technology" (Research Director: Masataka Goto (AIST)) was accepted in the research area "Core technologies for trusted quality AI systems" (Trusted quality AI systems) of the CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science & Technology) funding program provided by JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency). The project will run for five years from December 1, 2020 to March 31, 2026 with a focus on music recommendation research. We will do our best to make important academic and social contributions.
This project is named "RecMus Project".
News! (2020/09/12):
We held the OngaACCEL Symposium 2020 on September 12th, 2020.
News! (2019/09/05):
I was invited to give a keynote talk entitled "Intelligent Music Interfaces Based on Music Signal Analysis" at the International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx 2019) on September 5th, 2019.
News! (2019/09/04):
I received the Funai Achievement Award from FIT 2019 (Forum on Information Technology) on September 4th, 2019.
I gave an award commemorative lecture for the Funai Achievement Award at FIT 2019 (Forum on Information Technology) on September 4th, 2019.
News! (2019/03/20):
I was invited to give a keynote talk entitled "Intelligent Music Interfaces Based on Music Signal Analysis" at the ACM IUI Workshop on Intelligent Music Interfaces for Listening and Creation (MILC 2019) on March 20th, 2019.
News! (2018/03/08):
I was invited to give a keynote talk entitled "Intelligent Music Interfaces" at the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (ACM IUI 2018) on March 8th, 2018.
News! (2017/10/02):
I received the METI Minister's Award, Awards Program for Individual and Other Contributors to Promotion of Informatization from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) on October 2nd, 2017.
News! (2017/09/19):
I received the Fundamental Research Award from Japan Society for Software Science and Technology (JSSST) on September 19th, 2017.
I gave a special invited talk for the Fundamental Research Award at the 34th JSSST Annual Conference on September 19th, 2017.
News! (2017/06/24):
I was invited to give an invited talk entitled "Developing Web Services for Web-Native Music" at the 2017 AES International Conference on Semantic Audio on June 24th, 2017.
News! (2016/08/27):
We held the OngaCREST Symposium 2016 on August 27th, 2016.
News! (2016/08/08):
Our five-year research project "Building Foundations and Developing Applications for Next-Generation Media Content Ecosystem Technologies" (Research Director: Masataka Goto (AIST)) was accepted in the the ACCEL (Accelerated Innovation Research Initiative Turning Top Science and Ideas into High-Impact Values) funding program provided by JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency). The project will run for five years from August 8, 2016 to March 31, 2021 with a focus on music technologies. We will do our best to make important academic, industrial, social, and cultural contributions.
This project is named "OngaACCEL Project".
News! (2016/06/01):
Starting from June 1st, 2016, I serve concurrently as the Research Supervisor (Program Officer) of ACT-I (Advanced Information and Communication Technology for Innovation) within Strategic Basic Research Programs by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
News! (2015/11/21):
I was invited to give an invited talk entitled "Frontiers of Music Technologies: Singing Synthesis and Active Music Listening" at the Rakuten Technology Conference 2015 on November 21st, 2015.
News! (2015/10/20):
I was invited to give a keynote address entitled "Frontiers of Music Technologies" at the 2015 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (IEEE WASPAA 2015) on October 20th, 2015.
News! (2015/10/17):
I was invited to give a keynote talk entitled "Music Cultures Opened up by Music Technologies" at the International Conference on Culture and Computing (Culture and Computing 2015) on October 17th, 2015.
News! (2015/09/24):
I was invited to give a lecture entitled "Frontiers of Music Technologies: Singing Synthesis and Active Music Listening" for CIRMMT (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, Schulich School of Music, McGill University) Distinguished Lectures on September 24th, 2015.
Presentation Video:
News! (2015/08/01):
Our oral presentation on "CrossSong Puzzle: Generating and Unscrambling Music Mashups with Real-time Interactivity" (speaker: Jordan B. L. Smith) at SMC 2015 (12th Sound and Music Computing Conference) was given the Best Paper Award on July 30th, 2015.
News! (2014/12/22):
I was introduced by a Japanese magazine "AERA" issued by Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc. in January 2015.
News! (2014/11/27):
In WISS 2014 (The 22nd Workshop on Interactive Systems and Software) our research paper was given the WISS 2014 Best Paper Award on November 27th, 2004.
News! (2014/10/31):
On October 31st, 2014, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science announced that I was chosen as one of the recipients of the JSPS KAKENHI Best Reviewer Award. The award ceremony was held on December 12th, 2014 at AIST.
News! (2014/10/20):
I was invited to give a keynote speech entitled "Frontiers of Music Information Research Based on Signal Processing" at the The 12th IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing (IEEE ICSP 2014) on October 20th, 2014. I also gave an invited talk entitled "Singing Information Processing" on October 20th, 2014.
News! (2014/08/30):
We exhibited our web service "Songrium" featuring Songrium Chou-Rekishi Player and Songrium3D at the Hatsune Miku "Magical Mirai 2014" in OSAKA on August 30th, 2014.
News! (2014/08/23):
We held the OngaCREST Symposium 2014 on August 23rd, 2014.
News! (2014/07/20):
We exhibited our web service "Songrium" featuring Songrium Chou-Rekishi Player at the 53rd Japan Science Fiction Convention on July 20th, 2014.
News! (2014/07/19):
I was invited to give a talk at the AIST Tsukuba Center Open House on July 19th, 2014.
News! (2014/07/11):
An invited article "Music-understanding technologies to realize the full potential of digital music: Proposing New Ways to Enjoy Music for Supporting the Digital Content Industry" was published in "AIST Stories: From AIST to the Innovative World"(No.2, 2014).
AIST Press:
News! (2014/06/13):
I was invited to give a talk at the ISM (The Institute of Statistical Mathematics) Open House on June 13th, 2014.
News! (2014/04/26,27):
We exhibited our web service "Songrium" featuring Songrium Chou-Rekishi Player at the Niconico Chokaigi 3 on April 26th and 27th, 2014.
News! (2014/04/16):
I was featured in the Japanese daily newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun on April 16th, 2014.
News! (2014/03/20):
I gave an invited talk at the Akiba Techno Club Open Seminar on March 20th, 2014.
News! (2014/02/10, 2014/01/14):
On January 14, 2014, the Japan Academy announced that I was chosen as one of the 6 recipients of the Tenth Japan Academy Medal. The title is "Pioneering Work on Understanding of Music and Speech by Computers and Its Interface Application". The tenth award ceremony was held on February 10, 2014 at the Japan Academy in the presence of Their Imperial Highnesses Prince and Princess Akishino. I would like to express my gratitude to everybody who has supported my research.
News! (2014/02/10, 2013/12/13):
On December 13, 2013, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science announced that I was chosen as one of the 25 recipients of the Tenth (FY2013) JSPS PRIZE. The title is "Pioneering Work on Understanding of Music and Speech by Computers and Its Interface Application". The tenth award ceremony was held on February 10, 2014 at the Japan Academy in the presence of their Imperial Highnesses Prince and Princess Akishino. I would like to express my gratitude to everybody who has supported my research.
News! (2014/02/08):
I was invited to give a talk and attend a panelist discussion at "SNOW MIKU 2014" (Sapporo, Hokkaido) on February 8th, 2014.
News! (2014/01/17):
Our VocaListener was reported in a Japanese television program "Hatsune Miku's 'Miku Miku Make Miku'" on Hikari TV on January 17th, 2014.
News! (2013/11/08):
Our oral presentation on "Beyond NMF: Time-Domain Audio Source Separation without Phase Reconstruction" (speaker: Masataka Goto) at ISMIR 2013 (14th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference) was given the Best Oral Presentation Award on November 7th, 2013.
News! (2013/11/07):
We are pleased to announce that ISMIR 2014 (The 15th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference) will be held in Taipei, Taiwan (General Chairs: JS Roger Jang, Masataka Goto, and Xiao Hu). It will be held from October 27th to 31st, 2014. This will be the second ISMIR in Asian countries, following ISMIR 2009 that I organized in Kobe, Japan as the General Chair.
News! (2013/09/27):
I appeared as a guest speaker in a radio program on FM797 Kyoto Sanjyo Radiocafe on September 27th, 20313.
News! (2013/09/19):
I gave an invited talk at the JAWS 2013 symposium on September 19th, 2013.
News! (2013/09/11):
I was invited to give a talk at the "FTD: Future Technology Design 2013" on September 11th, 2013.
News! (2013/08/27):
The press release for Songrium was issued on August 27th, 2013 in Japan.
News! (2013/08/05):
Our oral presentation on "VocaRefiner: An Interactive Singing Recording System with Integration of Multiple Singing Recordings" (speaker: Tomoyasu Nakano) at SMC 2013 (10th Sound and Music Computing Conference) was given the Best Paper Award on July 31st, 2013.
News! (2013/07/20):
I and IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan) were given the 44th Seiun Award: The Best Nonfiction itestimonialj on July 20th, 2013.
News! (2013/06/05):
I was given the IPSJ Activity Contribution Award by IPSJ (The Information Processing Society of Japan) on June 5th, 2013.
News! (2013/06/05):
I was given the IPSJ Best Paper Award by IPSJ (The Information Processing Society of Japan) on June 5th, 2013.
News! (2013/05/31):
We exhibited VocaListener and our web service "Songle" in a special exhibition at the Tsukuba Expo Center from March 23rd to June 9th, 2013.
News! (2013/04/04):
We exhibited our web service "Songle" in a regular exhibition at the AIST Science Square TSUKUBA since April 2013.
News! (2013/03/01):
Our research results were reported by a Japanese science magazine "someone" issued by Leave a Nest Co., Ltd. in March 2013.
An invited article on our web service "Songle" was published in a Japanese education magazine "Saitama Education" (Vol.66, No.7, pp.7-9, March 2013).
An invited article on our web service "Songle" was published in a Japanese education magazine "CHANNEL" (Vol.12-3, pp.1, November 2012).
News! (2013/01/31):
An invited article "Crowdsourcing-Based Web Services for Speech and Music" (Masataka Goto) about PodCastle and Songle was published in the IEEE ComSoc (Communications Society) MMTC (Multimedia Communications Technical Committee) E-Letter (Industrial Column: Special Issue On "Crowdsourcing-based Multimedia Systems", Vol.8, No.1, pp.23-26, January 2013).
News! (2012/10/29):
I was invited to give a keynote talk entitled "PodCastle and Songle: Crowdsourcing-Based Web Services for Spoken Content Retrieval and Active Music Listening" at the International ACM Workshop on Crowdsourcing for Multimedia (CrowdMM 2012) on October 29th, 2012. I was also invited to participate in a "Panel Discussion" as a panelist on October 29th, 2012.
News! (2012/09/26):
I was invited to give a keynote talk entitled "PodCastle and Songle: Web Services for Retrieval and Browsing of Speech and Music Content on the Basis of Automatic Content Analysis and Crowdsourcing" at the International Workshop on Search Computing of CHORUS+ Network of Audio-Visual Media Search on September 26th, 2012. I was also invited to participate in a "Concluding Panel on the Future of Search" as a panelist on September 26th, 2012.
Presentation Video:
News! (2011/11/24, 2012/02/04):
I organized a special session "Frontiers of Singing Information Processing" as an event of the 94th IPSJ SIGMUS Meeting on February 3rd, 2012.
News! (2011/08/24):
Our five-year research project "Building a Similarity-aware Information Environment for a Content-Symbiotic Society" (Research Director: Masataka Goto (AIST)) was accepted in the research area "Creation of Human-Harmonized Information Technology for Convivial Society" of the CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science & Technology) funding program provided by JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency). The project will run for five years from October 1, 2011 to March 31, 2017 with a focus on music information research. We will do our best to make important academic and social contributions.
This project is named "OngaCREST Project".
News! (2011/07/26):
I was invited to give a talk on VocaListener and "Music Listening in the Future" at an experimental concert "Strange Voice" by an artist "Maywa Denki" on July 26th, 2011.
News! (2011/06/08):
Yamaha Corporation, on June 8th, 2011, announced that our VocaListener will be released as a commercial product (VOCALOID Job Plugin) for VOCALOID3.
News! (2011/01/25):
Our VocaListener and VocaWatcher are reported on a Japanese television program NHK Science ZERO on February 5th, 2011. I also appeared as a guest speaker in the studio.
Media Coverage:
News! (2010/09/27, 2011/01/18):
I was invited to give a lecture on music information processing at AIST Science Cafe in Caffe Berger (Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan) on October 27th, 2010.
News! (2010/09/27, 10/05):
We exhibited a singing humanoid robot "HRP-4C Miim" based on VocaListener (singing-to-singing synthesis system) and VocaWatcher (natural singing motion generator for a humanoid robot) at the CEATEC JAPAN 2010 (Makuhari Messe) from October 5th to 9th, 2010.
[2010/10/05]
Exhibitions (Demonstrations):
Media Coverage:
News! (2010/07/07, 08/02,16):
I organized a special session "Frontiers of Singing Information Processing" as an event of the 86th IPSJ SIGMUS Meeting on July 28th, 2010.
News! (2010/06/15):
An invited review article "Music Informatics" was published in the IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan) Magazine (Vol.51, No.6, pp.661-668, June 2010).
News! (2010/06/09):
A series of our music information research was reported in an article entitled "Music Listening in the Future" on the Japanese magazine "TV Bros. (the TV magazine of the future)" (No.593, p.86, June 9th, 2010).
News! (2010/05/22,24, 08/16):
I was invited to give a keynote address entitled "Music Listening in the Future" at the 128th AES Convention in London (AES London 2010) on May 22nd, 2010. I was also invited to participate in the workshop "Interacting with Semantic Audio" as a panelist on May 24th, 2010.
Press Release:
Media Coverage:
News! (2010/04/27):
I was interviewd by the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence. Its article in Japanese was published in the Journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (Vol.25, No.1, pp.164-168, January 2010).
News! (2010/03/22):
Our research project on PodCastle was reported in an article on the Japanese magazine "NIKKEI PERSONAL COMPUTING" (p.117, March 22nd, 2010).
News! (2010/01/22, 03/31):
At the 50th Anniversary National Convention of Information Processing Society of Japan, I organized a two-hour special session on CGM (Consumer Generated Media) with the focus on "Miku Hatsune", "NICO NICO DOUGA", and "PIAPRO" at the University of Tokyo on March 10th, 2010. There were invited talks and a panel discussion by Hideki Kenmochi (Yamaha Corporation), Hiroyuki Itoh (Crypton Future Media, Inc.), Akihiko Koizuka (Dwango Co., Ltd.), and Satoshi Hamano (Nihon Gigei, Inc.) This special session was reported on a lot of online new sites.
News! (2009/12/04):
Our research project on the interactive generation of dance video clips was given the "WISS 2009 So-net Award: Gold Award" at the 17th Workshop on Interactive Systems and Software (WISS 2009) on December 3rd, 2009.
News! (2009/10/19):
A series of our music information research was reported in an article on the Japanese magazine "RIKEI NAVI" (pp.18-19, October 19th, 2009).
News! (2009/08/17, 10/30):
We organized the ISMIR 2009 (10th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference) that was held in Kobe, Japan from October 26th to 30th, 2009 (General Chairs: Masataka Goto and Ichiro Fujinaga). We had 308 participants from 29 countries. Thank you all for your contributions to the conference!
As satellite events after ISMIR 2009, we also organized the CrestMuse Workshop 2009 at Kyoto University on October 31st, 2009 and the Special SIGMUS Symposium at the University of Tokyo on November 2nd, 2009 to share the state-of-the-art research activities with ISMIR participants and Japanese researchers.
News! (2009/05/29):
I was given the IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan) Nagao Special Researcher Award from the IPSJ on May 29th, 2009.
News! (2009/05/01):
Starting from May 1st, 2009, I serve concurrently as a Project Manager of the MITOH YOUTH Program (the Exploratory IT Human Resources Project) by the Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA), Japan.
News! (2008/04/15):
I was given The Young Scientists' Prize, The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on April 15th, 2008.
News! (2007/10/19):
I was given DoCoMo Mobile Science Awards ``Excellence Award in Fundamental Science'' on October 19th, 2007.
News! (2007/09/25):
We are pleased to announce that ISMIR 2009 (The Tenth International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference) will be held in Kobe, Japan (General Chairs: Masataka Goto and Ichiro Fujinaga). It will be held from October 26th to 30th.
News! (2005/05/20):
Our paper "SmartMusicKIOSK: Music Listening Station with Chorus-Search Function" published in Transactions of Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) was given the IPSJ Best Paper Award on May 20, 2005. I wish to express my gratitude to those who have supported this project.
News! (2005/04/01):
I began serving concurrently as an associate professor (cooperative graduate school program) of the Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba on April 1st, 2005.
News! (2004/11/01):
An invited review article "Recent studies on music information processing" (HTML version) was published in the journal "Acoustical Science and Technology" (Vol.25, No.6, pp.419-425, November 2004).
News! (2004/05/28, 06/10):
My research project on "SmartMusicKIOSK: Music Listening Station with Chorus-Search Function" was reported on the on-line news sites of Nature and American Institute of Physics.
Reports on Newspaper, Television, and Magazine:
News! (2004/05/25):
News! (2003/08/01, 09/09):
My research project on "SmartMusicKIOSK: Music Listening Station with Chorus-Search Function" was reported in the morning edition of the Japanese daily newspaper "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" on August 1, 2003, and in the Japanese newspaper "Nikkei Ryutsu Shimbun (Nikkei Marketing Journal)" on September 9, 2003.
Reports on Newspaper, Television, and Magazine:
News! (2003/03/01,07):
Our paper "SmartMusicKIOSK: Music Listening Station with Chorus-Search Function" presented in the Japanese symposium "Interaction 2003" of the IPSJ (The Information Processing Society of Japan) was given the Best Paper Award on February 27, 2003. I wish to express my gratitude to those who have supported this project, especially to Hideki Asoh (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) for his valuable discussions.
Reports on Newspaper, Television, and Magazine:
Old "News!" is here.
Research Projects:List of Research Projects (Including Collaborative Research)
Publications:
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