• Design methodology of cyber-physical systems: Cyber-physical systems connect everything in the physical world to the Internet, process enormous amounts of obtained data in the information or cyber world, and work on the physical world. In these systems, many aspects of quality is required including performance, responsiveness, power efficiency, reliability, security, and so on. Since these aspects are in trade-off relationship, it is challenging to satisfy the requirement depending on the processing of each system. We are researching the design methodology of cyber-physical systems through advanced orchestration of widely distributed edge devices, networks, and servers by making use of characteristics of the target processing.

• Ultra-low power computing: We are researching an innovative computing that dramatically reduces power consumption by coordinating and cooperating devices, circuit technologies, architectures and system software across design layers. For this purpose, we extract and utilize the characteristics of processing, such as parallelism and locality, to realize innovative computing that enables optimization of processing according to the characteristics of devices and circuits.

• Normally-off computing: The power consumed in a computer system is classified into dynamic power which is consumed by computing operations, and static power which is consumed even during standby. Since static power does not contribute to processing, its reduction is essential for lowering the power consumption of systems. Nowadays, various computers are used in all aspects of our lives, and many of them spend more time in standby mode than in operation mode. For example, while biological or environmental measurements are performed at intervals of a few seconds to a few minutes, the processing time required for a single measurement is only a few milliseconds in some cases, so most of the time is spent in standby. Our goal is to establish a normally-off computing method to achieve much lower power consumption by thoroughly realizing "normally-off", which actively cuts off the power supply to all components other than those that really need to operate.

• Cybersecurity: With the development of IT society, cybersecurity has become an urgent issue to be addressed. Recent security threats are characterized by the diversification of attack targets and the sophistication of attack methods. For example, as a large number of IoT devices with different security levels are connected to the cyber space, these devices can be hijacked by attackers without being noticed and become the source of new attacks. In addition, completely new attack methods have emerged, such as Spectre and Meltdown, which exploit hardware vulnerabilities. This issue forces a rethinking of the fundamental operating principles of processors. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the principles of computer systems and to take countermeasures against such vulnerabilities. From this point of view, we are conducting research on cyber security to realize countermeasures against vulnerabilities in the entire system, including end devices, networks, and servers.

Link to researchmap  

• Received B.E. (Electronic Eng.) in 1985 from the University of Tokyo

• Received Ph.D. (Electrical Eng.) in 1990 from the University of Tokyo

• 1990-1996, Institute of Information Sciences and Electronics, University of Tsukuba

• 1996, Associate Professor, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Tokyo

• March,1996 - January,1997, Visiting Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine

• since 2010, Professor, Department of Information Physics and Computing, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo  

• 2014-2018, Director, Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo

• 2018-2024, Special Advisor to the President, The University of Tokyo

• since 2024, Dean, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo

• Senior Member of IEEE and ACM

Dept. Information Physics and Computing, Grad. School of IST, The University of Tokyo

Security Informatics Education and Research Center, The University of Tokyo (Director, Joint Appointment)

Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo (Joint Appointment)

Systems Design Laboratory, Grad. School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo) (Joint Appointment)

7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

Department of Information Physics and Computing,
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology,
The University of Tokyo