SPEAKERS
TEDxSapporo 2013
Hiroshi Ishii
Professor/ MIT Media Lab
Hiroshi Ishii is a Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab. He was awarded tenure from MIT in July 2001, and was named Associate Director at the Media Lab in May 2008. He was honored with the Jerome B. Wiesner Professorship Chair from MIT in April 2011. He directs Tangible Media Group and co-directs Things That Think (TTT) consortium.Hiroshi Ishii’s research focuses upon the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment. At the MIT Media Lab, he founded the Tangible Media Group in fall 1995 pursuing a new vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): “Tangible Bits.” His team seeks to change the “painted bits” of GUIs to “tangible bits” by giving physical form to digital information.
He received B. E. degree in electronic engineering, M. E. and Ph. D. degrees in computer engineering from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1978, 1980 and 1992, respectively.
Takafumi Horie
Biz Entrepreneur
Born in 1972 in Fukuoka Prefecture.
He is a former president of livedoor Co.,Ltd. While enrolled in Tokyo University, he founded Livin’ on the EDGE Co., Ltd., the predecessor of livedoor Co.,Ltd. He has changed the company name to livedoor Co.,Ltd. in 2004, and has announced that livedoor acquired the old Kintetsu Buffaloes, a Japanese baseball team, which catapulted Mr. Horie into the limelight. In 2005, livedoor purchased stocks of radio station Nippon Broadcasting System （NBS） and became the largest stockholder, which led the company into trouble with a group business of NBS and Fuji Television. In 2006, he was arrested for allegations of securities fraud by the investigative team from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, and was sentenced to 2.5 years imprisonment in 2007. In 2011 the Supreme Court turned down the appeal and he was sent to jail on June 20, 2011. He was freed from jail on March 27, 2013. Currently, he plays an active role mainly in his own rocket development project. His mail-magazine ”Can’t tell on blog” has over 10,000 subscribers.
Kazunori Asada
Independent Scientist
Kazunori Asada is an independent scientist with two Ph.D.s in Medical Science and Media Design. He developed the MN-128 series, a digital communication equipment sold by NTT, which triggered the spread of the Internet in Japan, and contributed to establishing the Japan’s first digital certification authority company. In 1997, Asada founded an information security technology company, Open Loop Inc. and led the company to be listed on NASDAQ Japan (currently Osaka Exchange, Inc.) in 2001 as president and CEO. Through experiences such as working at a biotechnology company in the United States, he is now working as an independent scientist who has multi-expertise: information technology, cryptography, medical science, mathematics, media technology, and chromatics. In 2010, Asada developed a color vision assistance tool for color deficient individuals, named “Chromatic Glass,” which increases color visibility and enhances the ability of distinguishing colors, as well as “Chromatic Vision Simulator” for people with normal color vision to experience what color deficient people see. In the following year, he released a reading assistance tool, “Brighter and Bigger” for people with presbyopia, cataract, and weak sight. Having about 280,000 users throughout the world, all of these softwares are released free.
BLACK
World YoYo Champion/ Performing Artist/ TED 2013 Speaker
BLACK is a world Yo-Yo champion, performer and a traveler of extraordinary passion and determination.
Although he was not dexterous enough and hated sports while in school, his efforts in mastering yo-yo finally paid off and he reached the world’s top. In spite of being a world champion, however, nothing really changed and he continued to live a normal life as a university student.After graduation, while he was working in a company he noticed that he had lost his passion for yo-yo. He decided to quit his job and start working as a free performer. Thanks to many people’s support, he became a world champion again and even passed an audition for Cirque du Soleil.
BLACK’s stories of passion and effort were noticed and he was invited as a Japan’s representative to give a presentation and performance during TED Conference 2013 in the USA.BLACK continues performing around the world, speaking at TED conferences and giving presentations in order to share knowledge he has earned from his experiences.
Mai Mukaida
Social Entrepreneur
When she was a 17-old-high-school-student, she visited Nepal and joined an NGO involved in literacy education for women. She studied sociology at Oguma Eiji’s laboratory at university. In 2009 she established Coffret Project. To date, the company has delivered around 5000 cosmetics to Nepal, Turkey, Indonesia, and the Philippines and held cosmetics workshops for around 1000 women in order to help them regain their natural confidence and dignity.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, she sent about 10000 cosmetics contributed by 40 cosmetic makers to the affected areas and also held numerous workshops. In April 2013, she launched a natural cosmetic brand called Lalitpur to create jobs for women in Nepal and Ishinomaki City.
Tsuyoshi Yamamoto
Professor/ Hokkaido University
Tsuyoshi Yamamoto is a Professor of Information Science and Technology at Hokkaido University. Currently, he is appointed as Vice Director of Center for Intellectual Property and Innovation of Hokkaido University.
He received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electronics Engineering from Hokkaido University in 1976 and 1978 respectively, and a degree of Doctor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from Hokkaido University in 1986. From 1978 to 1980, he worked at Fujitsu Ltd. In 1982, he was appointed a lecturer at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Hokkaido University. Since then, he worked in the fields of computer graphics, symbolic computation, medical image processing and 3D spatial user interface.
He characterize his style of research by following words: “Visualization and Implementation”.
Tetsuya Kaida
Creator
Born in Gifu Prefecture and graduated from University of Tokyo, Tetsuya Kaida worked for Toyota for nearly 30 years in several divisions, including service, marketing development and product planning. Among his many accomplishments, in 2002 Kaida embarked upon restructuring global Motor Shows by using concept cars and innovative space design. Two years later he created “Today for Tomorrow” as a technology development philosophy for application within and outside the company.
The “Today for Tomorrow” principle was based upon enabling human interaction under the theme of “tomorrow may bring a greater encounter, so that we may become kinder, healthier, safer and surrounded by even more excitement, more beauty and more enjoyment than today.” In 2007, Kaida created the Business Revolution Corporate Value Project Department, with the task of starting a full-scale reconsideration of corporate value creation for Toyota. He was also head of the announcement of the new concept cars Toyota 1/X, Toyota RIN and Toyota i-REAL. In 2012 Tetsuya Kaida resigned from Toyota Motor Corporation and established his own company ‘ Kaze Creative’.