Keynote Talks

Abstract:

Over the past decade, advances in deep learning have made it easier for dialogue systems to handle various modalities in the real world, and research on multimodal dialogue systems has advanced enormously. Voice input devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home have entered our daily lives in the past ten years. Agent robots that handle various modalities will be realized as real-world services in another 10 years. What should young researchers consider in such an environment as they develop their careers? I participated as a PhD student at YRRSDS2014 10 years ago. Based on my experiences in academia over the past 10 years, I would like to discuss what career path you should follow in the next 10 years.

Bio:

Koichiro Yoshino is an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of

Technology, and is cross-appointed with RIKEN as a team leader.

He received his B.A. from Keio University in 2009, and M.E. and Ph.D. in informatics from Kyoto University in 2014. He worked at Kyoto University and NAIST. From 2019 to 2020, he was a visiting research of Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.

He is working on areas of spoken and natural language processing, especially robot dialogue systems. Dr. Koichiro Yoshino received several honors, including the best paper

award of IWSDS2020, IWSDS2024, and the best paper award of the 1st NLP4ConvAI workshop. He is a member of IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee (SLTC), a member of Dialogue System Technology Challenge (DSTC) Steering Committee, an action editor of ACL rolling review (ARR),

a board member of SIGdial and a board member of association for The Association for Natural Language Processing. 

Abstract:

In the rapidly evolving field of dialogue systems, researchers hold a unique position, equipped to drive advancements in dialogue processing technologies while addressing emerging social needs.

This talk will trace the journey from academic research to founding a university spin-out startup, showing how insights from cutting-edge technologies and user experiences can tackle real-world challenges and generate a social impact.

Drawing from my experience as a dialogue systems researcher turned entrepreneur, I’ll discuss the role of dialogue technologies in shaping the future of human-computer interaction and their broader implications for social innovation, encouraging young researchers to think creatively beyond academic boundaries.

Bio:

Yoichi Matsuyama is the Co-Founder and CEO of Equmenopolis, Inc. and an Associate Research Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. The mission of Equmenopolis is “Towards a Human-AI Co-Evolving Society,” where we dispatch conversational AI agents to schools and workplaces to improve creativity and productivity. He specializes in developing computational models of human conversation, integrating AI, linguistics, social science, and human-agent interaction. Before his current role, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the ArticuLab, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. His work has garnered attention from major media outlets, including MIT Technology Review, The Washington Post, CNBC, BBC, CNET, Popular Science, Nikkei, and NHK. He holds a B.A. in cognitive psychology and media studies, as well as an M.E. and Ph.D. in computer science from Waseda University, earned in 2005, 2008, and 2015, respectively.