Professor Yukio Ohsawa, received the Research Award from KES International

On 13th December 2021, Professor Yukio Ohsawa, Department of Systems Innovation, received the Research Award from KES International (Headquarters: Selby, UK).


the Research Award from KES International
“Research Award” KES (Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems) International, headquartered in Selby, UK, is a professional society providing community, networking, research and publication opportunities for all those involved in knowledge-intensive topics and knowledge transfer. Its community has approximately 5000 researchers, engineers, and practitioners, and has been organizing conferences in the field of intelligent systems for over 20 years. This award was presented by KES International to Prof. Ohsawa for his long-term academic contributions.

About awarded research
This award has been addressed to the research on Chance Discovery, its extensions, and the contribution of these works to the communities relevant to KES international. Around 1999-2004, we were in the AI Cambrian era when not only mature machine learning technologies but also other technologies for analysis and visualization of data with high interpretability for humans were being created every day. Workers in various business domains were learning the methodology of data mining, which uses these technologies to acquire knowledge to be used by humans, and were buying expensive tools for data mining.  In data mining, however, the interactions that occur between people should include steps to reflect their interests on generating data and incorporating the data into their own intellectual activities, rather than leaving the steps to tools on machines. The importance of human eyes, ears, hands, mouths, and feet has been well recognized since when users noticed the risk of the overconfidence of machine learning. Chance Discovery is an in-depth study of the role of human hands and minds in helping people get information from data to help themselves make decisions, and the ways in which people communicate to reach chance discovery. The results have now evolved into creative data market design and other studies that support the work of many companies, municipalities, and healthcare providers.

Your impression & future plan
I thought that the "boom" would be overwhelming and that it would be difficult to gain recognition, but I am glad that people continue to pay attention to my work, and I believe that it is beneficial to society. From April, we will establish "Data Collaboration Innovation Literacy" as a social collaboration program, that is an extension of chance discovery and its extensions. We promote this program with the support and participation of four companies from different industries. We aim to in a way that show unexpected value creations to the academic and industrial communities.