Ko Watanabe
Medicine Trustworthy AI & CHI Researcher
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
I am Medicine Trustworthy AI & CHI Researcher based in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
My area of expertise encompasses the entire Artificial Intelligence (AI) product implementation: from an idea or design to generation of machine learning function, developing software using web clouds, some backend techniques, model implementation, and improving the model after deploying the service.
Also, Trustworthy AI such as explainability and fairness (or more) of AI is my interest. Currently fully working on the project MissionKI, which our team or myself aims to implement test-tool for the medicine related AI products.
News
[03.2025] Accepted work in ETRA 2025 (Short Paper)
- PupilSense: A Novel Application for Webcam-Based Pupil Diameter Estimation[03.2025] Accepted work in ABC 2025 (Journal Paper)
- TrackThink Dashboard: Understanding Student Self-Regulated Learning in Programming Study (IJABC)
- ABCDE: Appearance-Based Confidence Detection by Evaluating Gaze Behavior Using Deep Learning (IJABC)[02.2025] Accepted work in CVPR 2025 (Full Paper)
- TKG-DM: Training-free Chroma Key Content Generation Diffusion Model[02.2025] Accepted work in AHs 2025 (Full Paper and Demo)
- GenAIReading: Augmenting Human Cognition with Interactive Digital Textbooks Using Large Language Models and Image Generation Models (Full Paper)
- Augmenting Online Meetings with Context-Aware Real-time Music Generation (Demo Paper)[02.2025] Attended ICAART 2025
- Presented our work: Webcam-based Pupil Diameter Prediction Benefits from Upscaling[01.2025] Accepted work in IEEE Access
- Img2Vocab: Explore Words Tied to Your Life with LLMs and Social Media Images IEEE Access
Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany, 2024
M.S. in Computer Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, 2019
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan, 2017
Work Experience
Full-time
Trustworthy AI Researcher, DFKI GmbH, Germany, July 2024 - Present
PhD Researcher, Psyberlab in RPTU Kaiserslautern and SDS Group in DFKI GmbH, Germany, Mar 2021 - June 2024
Software Engineer, Pococha in DeNA co ltd, Japan, Apr 2019 - Feb 2021
Internship
Software Engineer, Affectify Inc, Mar 2024 - Present
Scrum Master, Allesgood Inc, Jul 2022 - Feb 2023
Research Internship, DFKI GmbH, Apr 2018 - Oct 2018
Software Engineer, Rakuten Books in Rakuten Group, Feb 2018 - Mar 2018
Student Internship, Public Relations in MEXT (Japanese Government), Aug 2018 - Sep 2018
Fundings
CREST AIP CHALLANGE BUDGET: Received ¥1,000,000 for the use of my own research.
TOBITATE JASSO Scholarship: Received ¥88,000 per month for two years. A total of ¥2.112.000.
Half Repayment Exemption for JASSO Scholarship: Received ¥1.056.000 as exemption.
Commitee
CHI2025 late-breaking-work AC, Augmented Humans 2025, ICMU 2025 - TPC, IEEE SMARTCOMP 2024 - TPC
Reviews
DIS'25 (2), IDC'25 (1), ETRA'25 (3), CHI'25 (13), Decision Support System (1), Springer Nature -Scientific Reports (5), IUI'25 (3), IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems (1), SMARTCOMP'24 (3), CHI' 24 (1), AHs' 24 (2), AHs' 23 (2)