Speakers

Mr. Mikio Katayama

Representative Director, Vice Chairman & Chief Technology Officer, NIDEC CORPORATION

Apr. 1981
Sharp Corporation.
Apr. 2006
Representative Director, Member of the Board of Directors and First Senior Vice President
Apr. 2007
Representative Director, Member of the Board of Directors and President
Apr. 2012
Member of the Board of Directors and Chairman
Sep. 2014
Executive Consultant, Nidec Corporation
Oct. 2014
Vice Chairman Chief Technology Officer (CTO) (current position)
Jun. 2015
Representative Director, Member of the Board of Directors and Vice Chairman (current position)

Mr. Alexandre Parilusyan

Vice-President (Worldwide Smart Cities), Dassault Systèmes

As a vice president of Dassault Systèmes, he was in charge of global expansion of business related to the smart city and sustainable city projects. Especially, he is in charge of strengthening the relations with important municipal officials in Asian countries, primarily Singapore.

Mr. George Loh

Program director, National Research Foundation Singapore (Prime Minister's Office)

Singapore Government top officials.
Graduated from Ohio state’s university in 1986 (majoring at computer engineering).
He passed through the following governmental important posts and took the current position in 2011.
・The Head (Maritime Systems), Defence Research & Technology Office in Ministry of Defence
・the Head Capability Development (Underwater Syetems) in Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA)

Mr. Wataru Dokite

Director / General Manager, ICT Group, KYOCERA Communication Systems Co., Ltd.

Joined Kyocera Corporation in 1983, and assigned to Business Management Division at headquarters in Kyoto. Engaged in operating system development for Engineering and Manufacturing Division, in addition, core system development outside Kyocera. Became a director in 2016, and currently, he is in charge of General Manager of ICT Group.

Mr. Emmanuel Schneider

Director, Consulting Services, Country Digitization-France, Cisco Systems

Passionate about resilient and smart cities agenda, Emmanuel is Director for Cisco's Country Digitization Acceleration (CDA) Program in France. After studying Management Information Systems at Paris Dauphine University, he joins Accenture to develop Transportation and Infrastructure consulting services for the next 16 years before joining Cisco on the CDA Program in 2015.
Experienced in shaping complex deals and new businesses, including platform-based architectures, strategic alliances and innovative business models, Emanuel is seeking for long-term relationships with public and private clients and partners to develop sustainable business services enabled by technology solutions. He is also very motivated by international and multicultural work environments.”

Prof. Tomas Kåberger

Chair of Executive Board, Renewable Energy Institute

Tomas Kåberger has been the Chair of Executive Board of Renewable Energy Institute since its foundation in 2011. Academically, he got an MSc in Engineering Physics, a PhD in Physical Resource Theory, and Docent in Environmental Science at Chalmers. He has been professor in International Sustainable Energy Systems at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, and he is currently Professor of Industrial Energy Policy at Chalmers University of Technology and serves as Distinguished Visiting Expert of bio-energy technology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.
Industrially, he has had leading roles in companies providing fuels and technology in the bio-energy industry, another company developing sustainable energy solutions for the automotive industry, and a company operating wind power plants. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Vattenfall, and the board of Industrifonden, an industrial investment foundation. Politically, he has served on board of Swedish and European Environmental Citizen’s organizations, several Swedish Government Commit tees developing energy and environmental legislation, and China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development as a member of a task force on Low-Carbon Industrialization Strategies. From 2008 until 2011 he was Director General of the National Swedish Energy Agency.

Mr. Makoto Kouyama

President and CEO, Alibaba.com Japan Co., Ltd.

Aug.1986
Joined SOFTBANK Corp. Japan (currently Softbank Group Corp.)
Sep.1999
Director, SOFTBANK EC Holdings Corp. (currently Softbank BB Corp.)
Jan.2000
President, SB Human Capital Corp.
Nov.2006
President, MySpace Japan KK
May.2008
President, Alibaba.com Japan Co., Ltd. (to present)

Mr. Emmanuel Flores Elías

J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam

Emmanuel Flores is the Cannes awarded Innovation Director who led the innovation, data and technology on the double Grand Prix iconic project ‘The Next Rembrandt’. A natural leader breathing technology, he is currently charged with helping companies navigate through the digital landscape and accelerate their go-to-market by using pioneering management methods.

A certified Scrum Master with experience on businesses and data Innovation Management, Emmanuel has built and end-to-end led teams of various talents including digital marketers, artificial intelligence experts, data scientists, customer researchers and software developers in order to bring to life cutting edge award-winning projects.

In 2016 he spearheaded J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam to the Cannes Lions ‘Innovation Agency of the Year’ award and, as a true globalist, he has supported the growth of startups and institutions in different places of the world like the Netherlands, Belgium, China and Mexico.

His work - and thought leadership on- the subject of how Artificial Intelligence can steer the creation of iconic communication campings has been extensively covered in America, Japan, Germany, UK and the Netherlands, in conferences worldwide like TEDx (Madrid), Most Contagious (London), the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Japanese documentary ‘What is human? An introduction to AI’ (NHK) and the Netflix series ‘Bill Nye saves the world’.

Jury member for the Innovation Category at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2017 and EuroBest 2016. Winner of over 50 international awards including the Cannes Grand Prix for Creative Data, the Grand Prix for Cyber and the Innovation Lion.

Mr. Tokushi Nakashima

President/CEO, Global Mobility Service,Inc.

The zero sports founder of the electric car venture and the first representative director president / CEO of BEET Philippines inc. was successively held.
He took office as the first delegate manager of the electric car spread meeting that three hundred fifty (350) memberships belong to and engaged in the spread of EV.
Working and living in the Philippines, he witnessed the reality that that many people could not purchase & use the car because they did not pass for credit review of the finance and he established Global Mobility Service inc.to create the society that a car is available to anyone. He provides the IoT X FinTech service that is indispensable to the society.
Tokyo University of Science Graduate School of Innovation Studies Department of Management of Technology (MOT) completion.
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry "Minister of Economy Trade and Industry prize for encouragement", Japan Junior Chamber, "Individual power award"
Junior Chamber International "TOYP award (the seventh in Japanese)" etc. lots of receiving a prize
Japanese venture society, article as for "the local CFO system and education aid package to venture formation of company" etc. lots of learned society activities

Mr. Takayuki Yamazaki

Representive Director & COO, Logbar Inc.

Born in 1978 in Chiba prefecture. He has established his independent business after making career at design studio to advertising agency. After engaging in activity on supporting planting and marketing strategies mostly focused on design, he established Logbar Inc in 2013. Since receiving the CES Innovation Award for development of wear lab device “Ring”, he has received “Good design award”, DFA Design for Asia Award and started offering the voice translation service “ili” in June 2017. His goal is to create the world with no communication problems through Ili.

Mr. Hisashi Taniguchi

President & CEO, ZMP Inc.

He engaged in R&D of Anti-Lock brake system on commercial vehicle at Control Device Manufacture. He then worked as Sales Engineer at Japanese Trading Company.
He founded network-contents venture naming ZMP Inc. in 2001. In early stage of venture, he created Two-leg-walk Robot for homeowner use and autonomous mobile music-play robot. In 2008, he started to work for automobile industry servicing autonomous land vehicle to global auto-manufacture/Research Institute.
In 2014, ZMP raise slogan of “Robot of Everything” strategy and advance to integrated robot business and have been running business such as autonomous driving vehicles platform "RoboCar", Autonomus Driving Taxi, Logistic Support Robot “CarriRo”, CarriRo Delivery and Drone currently.
In April 2016, he joined master course of Tokyo University of the Arts(“Geidai”)

M.D. Toshinori Ito

Director, Osaka Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention

1977
Graduated from Osaka University School of Medicine
1978
Osaka Police Hospital, Department of General Surgery & Cardiovascular Surgery, Resident
1985-88
UCLA, Department of Surgery & UT Houston, Department of Surgery, Research fellow
1997
Osaka University Medical School (Pancreatic Surgery), Associate Professor
2005-16
Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Department of Complementary & Alternative Medicine, Professor; Department of Integrative Medicine, Professor
2017-
Osaka Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Director

Prof. Masahiko Tsukamoto

Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University

Masahiko TSUKAMOTO received the B.E., M.S., and Dr.E. degrees from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1987, 1989, and 1994, respectively. From 1989 to 1995, he was a research engineer at Sharp Corporation. In 1995, he joined the Department of Information Systems Engineering of Osaka University as an assistant professor, and since 1996, he was an associate professor at the same department. Since 2004, he has been a professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Graduated School of Engineering, Kobe University.
His research topics include systems, interfaces, and applications of wearable and ubiquitous computing. His main application areas are entertainment, healthcare, and ecology. Since 2001, he has been using HMDs(Head-Mouted Displays) in his daily life. He is currently the president of the NPO wearable computer research and development institute, and the president of the NPO Japan wearable devices users group.

Mr. Masahiko Hayasaka

Director and General Manager, HUIS TEN BOSCH Co.,Ltd

Born in Iwaki city, Fukushima prefecture. After graduating from Faculty of Economics, Keio University, he joined the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. After completing the Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom (MBA) and working for the venture company majoring at video contents business, such as DLE, in August 2011 he participated in Huis Ten Bosch aiming for "an environment future city". He is responsible for producing “Henn-na Hotel 0th Hotel Project” as Director of Business Development. Established HTB Energy Co., Ltd. in February 2015 to conduct the electricity business, and assumed office as the representative director in December.

Dr. Sed Saad

CEO, University Professor, Minds@Works Japan

Dr. Sed SAAD is an University Professor and a Principal Consultant in Innovation and Strategy. He is, by training and by experience, an expert in Smart City Strategy for Japanese and Dubai-based organizations where he looks to smart city from following perspectives: Strategy Models, Business Models and Partnership Models. Prior to academic and consulting activities, he also worked for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as Vice-President for MENA (Smart Mobility/Smart Cities) and initiate the first integrated Intelligent Transport Systems-Electric Vehicles project in the Middle East As University Professor in Dubai, he supervised 100+ strategic management capstone academic research on smart cities in Dubai/Japan/global cities since 2013. In Japan, he conducted research on Intelligent Infrastructure System Management, System Innovation/Partnership Models across/within Japanese High Tech Industries Education: WASEDA University/Harvard University/MIT/Brussels University, PhD/MBA/MPA/BA

Ms. April Leung

General Manager (Business Development), SECOO Luxe

As General Manager of business development of SECOO Luxe since August 2017, April Leung is responsible for developing and implementing SECOO's business development 's overall direction. She is also responsible for overseeing and assisting SECOO's existing partners with the execution of their own respective business development strategies.
Based in Hong Kong, Ms Leung has over 1O years of retail and brand management experience with key extended projects and assignments in Greater China. April has extensive experience in working with luxury retail groups, life-style concept stores and F&B operators for different new, existing and revamped projects.
Prior to taking up this role, April was the Assistant General Manager for a leading developer in Hong Kong overseeing business developments of key projects in Greater China.

Mr. Yoshiyuki Tanohata

Managing Officer,TAKENAKA CORPORATION / Chairperson of Management committee, Osaka Business Park Committee

Education:
Osaka Institute of technology,Osaka,1979
Department of electrical engineering

Professional Experience:

Apr. 1979
Entered Takenaka Corporation
Mar. 2007
General Manager of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering Department
Apr. 2010
Associate General Manager of Osaka Main Office
Mar. 2014
Associate Managing Officer
Mar. 2015
Managing Officer
to the present

Mr. Taro Shimada

Senior Executive Operating Officer, Digital Factory Division Process Industries and Drives Division, Siemens K.K.

Mr. Taro Shimada joined the company of ShinMaywa Industries in 1990.
he had engaged aircraft design as engineer for about 10 years including the delegation to McDonnel Douglas Corp. and Boeing Company in USA.
In 1999, he had joined SDRC (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation, Which had been merged with Siemens AG later) as Technical Consultant in Tokyo and promoted to Director of Product and Industry Marketing, Business Consulting and Enterprise Sales.
In 2010, he had been appointed CEO of Siemens Industry Software K.K. in Japan and also hold the post of Vice President, Siemens PLM Software in USA.
After Delegation to Siemens AG in Erlangen, Germany in 2014, he has assumed Senior Executive Operating Officer and Division Lead in Japan of Digital Factory/Process Industries & Drives Division in Siemens K.K. from September, 2015.

Prof. David Worsley

Tata Steel sponsored Professor/Deputy Head (Director of Research), College of Engineering, Swansea University

Professor Worsley is author and co-author of 124 refereed scientific publications on coated product development. He has worked closely with the coatings industry since being appointed to the Materials Research Centre in the mid 1990’s, following an industry sponsored PhD (Johnson Matthey), an Industrial Fellowship (Astra Zeneca) and a British Steel Fellowship.

He is currently Deputy Head (Director of Research) in the College of Engineering at Swansea University.

Professor Worsley is the Research Director of SPECIFIC IKC (Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings). This Innovation and Knowledge Centre encompasses a research and delivery portfolio for transforming ‘Buildings into Power Stations’ by harnessing the power of solar energy. SPECIFIC is led by Swansea University with Strategic Partners Akzo Nobel, NSG Group, Tata Steel and Cardiff University plus a wide range of business and academic partners.

A major focus is in the application of building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) to provide an aesthetically pleasing and low cost solution to integrating renewable energy into the building fabric.

In 2015, Professor Dave Worsley was awarded the prestigious Hadfield Medal and Prize by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), in recognition of his distinguished work in the field of materials science and engineering; in particular, his achievements connected with the iron and steel industries.

Mr. Yosuke Mochizuki

Director, Nikkei BP Intelligence Group., Nikkei Business Publications

Yosuke Mochizuki is senior executive officer, director of Nikkei BP Intelligence Group. He was former group publisher of Electronics/Mechanical Group and director of Nikkei BP Clean Tech Institute, editor-in-chief of NIKKEI Electronics, publisher and editor-in-chief of NIKKEI MICRODEVICES. His expertise is energy, semiconductor and display. At 1987, he was joined to NIKKEI MICRODEVICES. He took charge of DRAM, flash memory, non-volatile memory, high speed bipolar, GaAs IC, liquid crystal display. Prior to joining NIKKEI MICRODEVICES, he passed through MSEE and BSEE of Chiba University.

Prof. Makoto Nagao

Director, International Institute for Advanced Studies

Born in 1936.
Director of International Institute for Advanced Studies.
President of Kyoto Prefectural Public University Corporation.
Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University.
Former President of Kyoto University.
Former Director of National Diet Library.
Former President of National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

One of the first scientist to develop machine translation, face recognition and various artificial intelligence systems.

Prof. Yoshinori Hiroi

Professor, Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University

Yoshinori Hiroi, born in 1961, became Professor at the Faculty of Law and Economics of Chiba University in 2003 and he moved to the current position in 2016. He was a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Science of MIT between 2001 and 2002. Professor Hiroi’s major areas are public policy and philosophy of science and has written many books in Japanese including Social Security of Japan (1999), Steady-state Society (2001) and Post -Capitalism (2015).

Mr. Junichi Miyakawa

Executive Vice President & CTO, SoftBank Corp.

2006
Executive Vice President & CTO, SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. (currently SOFTBANK Corp.)
2014
Director & COO, SPRINT Corp.
President & CEO, SOFTBANK US Corp.
Executive Vice President, SOFTBANK Satellite planning Inc.
2016
Executive Vice President & CTO SOFTBANK Corp
2017
Board Director, OneWeb Solutions Inc.

Dr. Richard Socher

Chief Scientist, Salesforce.com, inc.

Richard Socher is Chief Scientist at Salesforce where he leads the company’s research efforts and works on bringing state of the art artificial intelligence solutions to Salesforce.

Prior to Salesforce, Richard was the CEO and founder of MetaMind, a startup acquired by Salesforce in April 2016. MetaMind’s deep learning AI platform analyzes, labels and makes predictions on image and text data so businesses can make smarter, faster and more accurate decisions than ever before.

Richard was awarded the Distinguished Application Paper Award at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2011, the 2011 Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Award, a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship in 2012, a 2013 "Magic Grant" from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the 2014 GigaOM Structure Award and is currently a member of the WEF Young Global Leaders Class of 2017.

Richard obtained his PhD from Stanford working on deep learning with Chris Manning and Andrew Ng and won the best Stanford CS PhD thesis award.

Dr. Tanyanuparb Anantana

Founder and Director of CMU STeP

2016-present
・Committee member of Talent Mobility Program in Thailand, supported by Ministry of Education
・Board advisory of Chiang Mai Think Tank
・Committee member of Chiang Mai Smart City
2015-present
・Committee member of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), supported by Ministry of Science and Technology
2014-present
・Chairman of Northern Science Park (NSP) project (operated by seven Universities in Northern Thailand) supported by Ministry of Science and Technology
2014
Sub–Committee on Environment and Natural Disasters, under the Senate Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Environment
2013-present
Committee member of Thai Business Incubations & Science Parks Association (Thai-BISPA)
2012-2013
Adviser to Chiang Mai Governor on The Office of Strategy Management Upper Northern Provincial Cluster 1
2012-present
Founder and Director of Science and Technology Park, Chiang Mai University (STeP)
2008-2009
President of Thai Students’ Association in Japan (TSAJ) under the Royal Patronage
2005-present
Lecturer at Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chiang Mai University

OTHER EXPERIENCES :
・Over seven-year experience with more than 300 companies in fields of innovation, research and development management and Tech-Startups
・Lecturer and consultant for government organizations and private sectors in Thailand

Mr. Tran Dang Hoa

President, FPT Japan Co.,Ltd.

Hoa was born in 1978. After graduating from college, he joined a Japanese IT company in Vietnam where he learned skills related to software technology. He wanted to use his skills to contribute to the nation of Vietnam, so he joined FPT Software Company Limited. He was mainly in charge of developing embedded software for the Japanese market in subsidiaries of the company. Recently, he has been managing new business areas such as CAD/CAM and BPO and working on developing new markets, including Taiwan and Korea. In addition, he has been promoting the utilization of resources in Myanmar for offshore development. He was appointed as the vice-president of FPT Software Company Limited in April 2015. In order to further expand its business in Japan, he was also appointed as the president of FPT Japan in January 2016.

Education History:
1996
Graduated from Mathematics Special Advancement Class of the Hanoi University of Science Attached High School
(Won 2nd place in 1995 competition and 3rd place in 1996 competition of Vietnam Math Olympics while he was a student)
2000
Graduated from Computer Science Department of Thang Long University
2001
Graduated from Foreign Trade Department of Hanoi Foreign Trade University
Work History:
Jan. 2000
Served as an assistant at Computer Science Department of Thang Long High School
Nov2002
Joined a Japanese IT company in Vietnam
Apr. 2004
Joined Ho Chi Minh City Branch of FPT Software Company Limited
Nov. 2005
Assigned as Head of Osaka Sales Office FPT Software Limited (Currently FPT Japan Co., Ltd.)
May. 2007
Served as Manager of FPT Software Company Limited No. 11 Development Team
Jan. 2010
Appointed as President of FPT Software Research & Development Company
Jan. 2012
Acted as FPT Software Company Limited No. 11 Division Director
Apr. 2015
Appointed as Vice President of FPT Software Company Limited
Jan. 2016
Designated as President of FPT Japan Co.,Ltd. (joint appointment)

Mr. Jay Wu

General Manager, Green Field International (GFI) Group

GFI aims to provide CHEERS (Comfortable, Healthy, Enjoyable, Energy conscious, Reliable and Sustainable) solutions to its customers. With the rise of the Internet of Things in Smart Building and Smart City, GFI has expanded business to become a system integration company to provide IOT services to hospitality and commercial industry.

Jay was the leader of Taipei City Government’s project “Taipei City Public Housing Smart Community Procurement Strategy” and the co-leader of National Development Council’s project “Comprehensive Planning of Smart National Territory Development in Taiwan”.

Jay holds a B.Arch. degree from Chung Yuan University, and also earned M. Art .and M.S. degrees in Architectural Engineering and Computer Science respectively from the State University of New York at Buffalo,

Dr. Susumu Maruno

Director General of RDMM Promotion Center, Public Foundation Of Kansai Resrearch Institute

He received Ph.D. in engineering from Osaka University. He held Director of Advanced Technology Research Lab-Humanware Research Lab, Director of Intelligent Technology Research Lab and Vice-Minister & Director of Panasonic Corporation till April 2015.
He joined Public Foundation of Kansai research Institute as Supreme Adviser in May 2015, and he currently served as Director General of RDMM Promotion Center from April 2016.

Dr. Hiroshi Ando

Associate Director, Brain Function Analysis and Imaging Laboratory, Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology

1983
Bachelor of Science in Physics, Kyoto University
1987
Master in Psychology, Kyoto University
1993
Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT
1992-2013
Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute international (ATR)
(2006-2011 Head of Cognitive Dynamics Laboratory, ATR)
2006-
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)
(2011-2016 Director of Multisensory Cognition and Computation Laboratory, Universal Communication Research Institute,)
(2016 Associate Director of Brain Function Analysis and Imaging Laboratory, Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet))
2012年-
Guest Professor, Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University

Prof. Mitsunori Miki

Professor, Doshisha University

He is a professor of department of computer science, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. He received a degree of doctor of engineering from Osaka City University in 1978. The major research areas are optimization, parallel processing, and intelligent systems. Especially, distributed evolutional optimization algorithms performed using parallel computers have been the focused research fields. From 8 years ago, he has applied the optimization algorithm to the control of lighting environment. He invented an innovative lighting system which is called the Intelligent Lighting System. He is now doing research on the creation of comfortable environment with AI-based control of environment equipments.

Prof. Naoki Saiwaki

Advisor to the President (Professor), Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Cooperative Major in Human Centered Engineering, Nara Women's University

1993/05-1997/03
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Control Engineering, Fac. of Engineering Science, Osaka Univ.
1997/04-1999/03
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Systems and Human Science, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka Univ.
1999/04-2003/03
Lecturer, Dept. of Systems and Human Science, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka Univ.
2003/04-2012/03
Associate Professor, Fac. of Human Life and Environment, Nara Women's Univ.
2012/04-2016/03
Professor, Fac. of Intelligence and Informatics, Konan Univ.
2016/04-Present
Professor, Fac. Division of Human Life and Environmental Sciences, Nara Women's Univ.
2017/04-Present
Advisor to the President, Nara Women's Univ.

Dr. Masaaki Uchida

Senior General Manager, SUNTORY GLOBAL INNOVATION CENTER LIMITED

Masaaki Uchida received Ph.D. in bio-engineering from the University of Kyoto in 2000.
He mainly acquired research experience in the field of beer brewing in Suntory.
He is now responsible for the development of new technology in palatability and healthcare.

Dr. Hiroyuki Suzuki

Executive Vice president, Representative Director, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR)

1986
Received the Doctor of Science from the University of Tokyo, and joined the NTT R&anp;D Laboratories
1991, 1996
Invited scientist at Physics Institute of University of Bayreuth, Germany
1992-1993
Visiting scientist at Physics Institute of University of Bayreuth, Germany.
2007
Moved to ATR as a vice president, director, Strategic Management Unit
2010
Senior Vice President
2014
Being appointed additionally as director of Business Development Office
June, 2017
Executive Vice President, Representative Director
Also serves as the president of the Japanese Research Association for Organic Electronics Materials (JOEM) and a Board Member of the Sand Culture Society of Japan (SCJ) as of today

Mr. Lorenzo Di Pietro

Executive Director for Entrepreneurship, Business and Innovation, Barcelona Activa

Graduated from the Department of Economics at the University of Rome-La Sapienza (Italy) and studied at Master's degree in Public Social Policy at Pompeu-Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, and at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Spain. He also studied at the Executive Master Course at the Spanish Business School IESE Management Promotion Program of the Catalunya Administration School.

Since 2001, he held a position in Barcelona Activa, a regional development and economic promotion organization in Barcelona, where he initially attended "Porta 22, Espacio de Novas ocupaciones" (www.porta 22.com) project in the employment policy field. He set up a place for job seekers to introduce innovative and pioneering occupations and developed employment-related administrative services.

Currently he is an executive director of the founding support corporate innovation division, making efforts to promote new business in the city and promotion of innovative ecosystem in order to make Barcelona a global startup hub.

Mr. Kazuki Sakabayashi

Promoter, Business Development Office, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International

During his study at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), he developed an IoT pillow as an entrepreneur, participated in Ritsumeikan University sponsored Campus Venture Grand Prix, won first prize, etc. In addition, he received a number of other campus venture Grand Prix and took part in various events such as OMRON KOTO CHALLENGE, the pitch meetings and received plenty of awards.
He joined Oro Inc. in 2016 and engaged in sales of ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning).
Joined Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in 2017. In the Keihanna Research Complex project, he has been mainly in charge of matching and coordinating, including designing / planning / managing programs for entrepreneurs.

Dr. Hideki Tanaka

President/CEO, Elvez, Inc

After completion of doctoral program at post-graduate school of Tsukuba University, he was granted the doctor degree in mechanics. During his employment in NTT Data, he stayed in Silicon Valley, where he taught at the university about the system engineering, self-entrepreneurship and software engineering and accumulated his experience as an entrepreneur. In February 2016, he took the CEO position at Elvez. He is primarily in charge of governmental offices and universities.

Mr. Kazuyoshi Tenaka

Mayor, Minamiyamashiro Village

The year 1996~2007
Member of Minamiyamashiro Village Assembly
The year 2006~2007
Chairman of Minamiyamashiro Village Assembly
The year 2007~
Mayor of Minamiyamashiro Village(third term)

Mr. Kenji Morimoto

President-director, Minamiyamashiro Co., Ltd.

He was born in Minamiyamashiro village of Kyoto Prefecture in 1967. In 1985, he joined the Minamiyamashiro village office. He was a leader of the village planning project with the main focus on the road station project of this exotic town from 2010 to 2015.
He became the President-director of the Minamiyamashiro Co., Ltd., after retiring from the village office in 2016. He is managing the station tea house on the road in April 2017.

Mr. Tatsushi Isobe

CEO, Miyama Smart Energy Co.,Ltd.

After graduating from Doshisha University in 1981, I was joined Matsushita Electric Works, Co.,Ltd(now Panasonic Corporation). I was appointed director of Siam Matsushita Steel (Thailand)Co.,Ltd., strategy director and general Manager of Housing Systems Business Devision. I come to president of Miyama Smart Energy Co.,Ltd., assumption and present from March, 2015.

Prof. Izumi Aizu

Senior Research Fellow, Institute for InfoSocionomics, Tama University

Izumi promoted the PC based network and the Internet since 1980s. In 1997, he founded Asia Network Research in Malaysia, focusing on societal aspects of the Internet, its global governance and digital divide. In 2011, after the East Japan Great Earthquake and Tsunami, he joined the relief works using ICTs and started the Information Support pro bono Platform, iSPP, a not-for-profit organization. He is also a member of “IT Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART).
In 2012, he started to examine the social potential of digital fabrication and become convinced for the huge opportunity with “Social Fabrication” movement. His most recent research focus is “next mobility” – physical and digital mobilities combined.

Mr. Koji Asai

Director, RDMM Promotion Center, Public Foundation of Kansai Research Institute

He served at R&D department of the social system in “Omron Co. Ltd”. In 2012 he entered top-class research facility (public funded) focusing his activity on research and planning. Starting from 2015 he has been in charge of products promotion and innovation strategy at Kansai cultural academic research urban promotion organization. Since 2016 he has been in charge of planning of mobility and energy field after entering the newly formed RDMM support center.

Mr. Junichi Hirota

Engineer, Recycling-based Society Promotion Department, Environmental Division, Kyoto Prefecture

2014
Joined Kyoto Prefectural Government Office, assigned to the Department of the Environment, Office of Sound Material-cycle Society Assigned to manage affairs related to permits and instruction, etc., related to industrial waste at this department
2015
Also appointed as a cooperating staff member by the Kyoto 3R-Business Support Center
2016
Worked on providing support for projects related to 3R performed by waste-discharging enterprises

Mr. Osamu Okamura

General Manager, Community Energy Division, The Kansai Electric Power Company, Incorporated

April 1989
Joined Kansai Electric Power Co.,Inc.
July 2016
General Manager Community Energy Division

Mr. Yusuke Mimura

Sales Business Development Manager, Strategic Solution and Business Development, Cisco Systems G.K.

1991-1996: National Shiga University, The department of department-of-economics economics
1996-2011: Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West, Inc.,
2012-:Cisco Systems

Mr. Yukio Kuze

President(CEO), SHOWA CREATION CO., LTD

Graduated from the University of Tokyo(school of Science), obtained an MBA at University of Southern California. After worked at Dentsu, a Prep school teacher at Yoyogi-seminar, a Director of Regional business at Chiba Lotte team operation department, enter the environmental consulting business after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Returning to the local Kyoto, he established an energy consulting company and reached a contract for the ESCO project of the General Government Building and Police Headquarters in Kyoto Prefecture. Advocating the regional revitalization utilizing the benefits of reduction, advance development of LED, security cameras and Wi-Fi at Kayu-koji shopping street, now owns share room at the place. Promoting Smart City as a local company in cooperation with Kyoto Prefecture and Cisco Systems,also serving as a Director at Showadenkikohgyo.

Mr. Iván Páez Mora

Founder & CEO, Kappo Bike

Iván Páez Mora is an IT Engineer, Entrepreneur & International Speaker with more than 10 years of experiences worldwide, Main University Professor and Innovation, Entrepreneurship & IT Advisor. He is an expert in App Development, UX/UI, Gamification, Business Model, Marketing, Leadership and Public Speaking.

He has won numerous awards internationally for his work such as:
• Best Chilean Technological Development Award at AIE 2008
• Alumni & Best Ambassador Award at Start-Up Chile 2013
• Best Chilean Tech Innovation Award at Avonni 2014
• People’s Choice Startup Award at LeWEB, France 2014
• Recognized by UNESCO as one of the TOP 10 Most Promising Tech Innovation Worldwide 2015
• Recognized by TENCENT, China as TOP 7 Most Innovative Startup Worldwide 2015
• Best Tech Innovation of the Pacific Alliance 2016

He is the Founder and CEO of Kappo Bike, a platform that helps cities to increase the urban bicycle usage worldwide through gamification and safety navigation for citizens, wellness & CSR for companies and giving cyclists insight and predictive analytics for governments, enabling better planning and higher return on urban infrastructure investments.

Dr. Mitsuo Kawato

Director, ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory Group

MITSUO KAWATO received a B.S. degree in physics from Tokyo University in 1976, and Ph.D. degrees in biophysical engineering from Osaka University in 1981. From 1981 to 1988, he was a faculty member and lecturer at Osaka University. From 1988, he was a senior researcher and then a supervisor in ATR. Since 2003, he has been Director of ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories. Since 2004, he has been an ATR Fellow. In 2010, he became Director of ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratories. In 2016, he was jointly appointed as a special advisor, RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP).

Assistant Prof. Yoichi Ochiai

Advisor to president, Assistant professor, head of Digital Nature Group University of Tsukuba

B.1987, PhD (Applied Computer Science / University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies in 2 years the fastest record), From 2015, joined University of Tsukuba, School of Library Information and Media Studies as Assistant Professor. He is the head of Digital Nature Laboratory. CEO of Pixie Dust Technologies.inc, via JSPS Research Fellow DC1 and Research Intern on Microsoft Research Redmond. From 2017, he work as Advisor to President of University of Tsukuba, Visiting Professor of Osaka University of Art, and Visiting Professor of Digital Hollywood University. His interests on CG, HCI, VR, visual / audio / tactile presentation method, digital fabrication, automatic driving and human control. He wrote several books "The century of Enchantment (Planets)" and "Survival strategy of super AI era (Daiwa Shobo)".  He got many award such as World Technology Award 2015 from the WTN in 2015, Prix Ars Electronica from Ars Electronica in 2016, STARTS Prize from EU (European Union), the Laval Virtual Award from Europe's largest VR festival Laval Virtual for the fourth consecutive year until 2017. In Japan, won the Good Design Award, Media Arts Festival of Agency for Cultural Affairs, Innovative Technologies of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Certified as genius programmer / super creator certification from Information Promotion Agency Japan, Prize of Innovative Technologies from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Japan 3 consecutive yearly, selected as Inno-vation from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Japan. Also,Awarded in Asia Digital Art Award, Best Paper Award in ACE, Springer, ACM Augmented Human, Chosen as Best Video by Newscientist magazine in 2012, Best SIGGRAPH Paper selected by CG Channel in 2014. He has been featured in BBC, CNN, CNBC, Discovery, AP, Reuters, Daily Mail Paper, Telegraph Paper, Russian State Broadcasting, French National Broadcasting etc. and has been featured in more than 100 famous newspapers, magazines, television and web media all over the world. He held  "Image and Matter (Malaysia · Kuala Lumpur, 2016)" and "Imago et Materia (Tokyo Roppongi, 2017)"  as a solo exhibition. There are also a lot of media exposures including magazines, television, radio, etc., Covering the cover of design and art magazines such as design magazine Axis and media art journal Leonardo and cover page of Nature Index 2017 which is a research report on the extra work published by Nature magazine in the UK, such as magazines, televisions, and radio There are also many media exposures.  Many lectures were given at universities both in Japan and abroad and at symposiums such as TEDxTokyo, and at SEMICON Japan which is a large-scale conference of semiconductor technology, he served as the keynote speaker at the youngest ever in history in 40 years. As the group exhibition, he participated in "Ars Electronica Festival", "SIGGRAPH Art Gallery", “Kempoku Arts Festival" and "Media Ambition Tokyo". He worked on the collaborative works with famous brands and artists such as Sekai No Owari, Dom Perignon, Lexus, TDK, ONE OK ROCK, Kanahei and Sword Art Online theatrical version, etc. He had collaboration research projects with many business operators such as Toyota, Aisin Seiki, Denso, BMW, Fujitsu SSL, Dentsu, Hakuhodo, ADK, etc.

Mr. Jim Morrish

Chief IoT Solution Consultant, Huawei Enterprise Business Group.

Jim is a respected IoT industry expert, with over 20 years’ experience of strategy development and operations management. He is currently Chief IoT Solution Consultant, Huawei Enterprise Business Group. Previously he founded, managed and successfully exited Machina Research, the market leading IoT focussed industry analyst and consulting firm. He is Chairman of the Industrial Internet Consortium's Business Strategy Task Group and led the development of the IIC’s Business Strategy and Innovation Framework. He is also Co-Chair of the IIC’s Business Strategy and Solution Lifecycle Working Group. Jim is responsible for the addition of the term Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking to the lexicon of the IoT and has co-authored a book on Enterprise IoT. He also holds a range of other advisory positions in the IoT ecosystem and is a frequent conference chair and speaker.

Prof. Noboru Koshizuka

Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo

Noboru Koshizuka is a Professor in Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, the University of Tokyo, Japan. He is also Vice Director of YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory. Since 1990, he has been participating the TRON (The Realtime Operating system Nucleus) Project. For about 25 years, he has been researching ubiquitous computing, IoT (Internet of Things), embedded systems, human-computer interactions, computer networks, and open data.

Mr. Yuji Ueda

Representative Executive Officer President, Gaiax Co.Ltd.

Yuji UEDA was born in Osaka in 1974, and graduated from Doshisha University, Faculty of Economics, in 1997. After graduating from university, he was aiming for entrepreneurship and joining a company with venture support. A year and a half later, he started his own business at the age of 24, and listed his company when he turned 30.

Gaiax is a community conscious company that “empowers people to connect.” To realize this mission, not only the social media business which runs from the past, Gaiax is strengthening the investment in the fast-growing sharing economy business and related companies.

He is the outside director of AppBank Co., Ltd., PIXTA Inc., and Tokyo Individualized Educational Institute, INC. In addition, he is representative director/co-founder of Sharing Economy Association, Japan, and the director of Japan Blockchain Association.

Mr. Tatsuto Fujii

Principal Analyst, Digital Transformation, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc.

Tatsuto Fujii leads open innovation team in the division since 2014. He also established the start-up accelerator “MUFG Fintech Accelerator” and “MUFG Open API Hackathon” based in Tokyo. He is also a member of “FINOVATORS”, a pro bono based mentors group based in Tokyo by fintech specialists aimed at forming fintech ecosystem with fintech start-ups, FIs, regulators, academics, IT companies, so on. He previously spent over 15 years with the consulting team at Microsoft and IBM, where he provided consulting services regarding IT strategy for large financial institutions and regional banks.
MUFG is one of the world’s leading financial groups, with total assets of approximately $2.3 trillion USD as of June 30, 2015. Its services include corporate banking, commercial banking, retail banking, wealth management, investment banking, capital markets, personal and corporate trust, and transaction banking.

Mr. Mabito Yoshida

Director General for Policy Coordination, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

Born in Osaka Prefecture in 28 Aug. 1960
Graduated from Faculty of Law, Kyoto University
Apr. 1985 Joined the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications
July 2017 Director General for Policy Coordination, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

Mr. Seigo Kuzumaki

Program Director, SIP-adus, Cabinet Office

1985
Received Master degree in aeronautical engineering, University of Kyoto
1985
Joined Toyota Motor Corporation as a designing engineer for car shell body
2003
Appointed project general manager for vehicle safety, including management of passive and active safety development.
2011
Chief Safety Technology Officer (CSTO) Secretary
2014
Sub-Program Director for SIP (Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program) Automated driving systems Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
2016
Program Director for SIP (Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program) Automated driving systems Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
2017
Executive General Manager Advanced R&D and Engineering

Prof. Hiroshi Hosoi

President, Nara Medical University

1975
Bachelor of Medicine, Nara Medical University
1999
Professor of Nara Medical University, Department of Otorhinolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery
2005
Deputy director of Nara Medical University Hospital
2014
President of Nara Medical University

Dr. Atsuhiko Fukuoka

The director of a Hospital, Yoshino Hospital

Dr. Atsuhiko Fukuoka was born on July 7, 1963 in Osaka, and graduated from the Medical School of Nara Medical University in 1990. He began serving as a physician at the Yoshino Town National Health Insurance Yoshino Hospital in 1992. He returned to the No. 2 Department of Internal Medicine at Nara Medical University in 1998 where he worked on diagnosing and researching respiratory disease. In particular, he initiated a research project on nutrition therapy for chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) and quality of life (QOL). He became the Director of the Department of Internal Medicine of the Yoshino Town National Health Insurance Yoshino Hospital in 2007. In 2009, he began a research project on the connection between laughter and health, and tried to make breathing rehabilitation more enjoyable through the use of Laughter Yoga. Recently, he is considering applying laughter to community building so that the elderly can have fun in their communities.

Mr. Kanpei Hazama

Comedian, YOSHIMOTO KOGYO CO.,LTD.

Award:
“Humor great award” (1991) ACC award (Talent award)
“Shanghai TV Baiyulanjiang” (4th time 1992) as talented person
“Best father yellow ribbon award” (15th time 1996) Art department award
“Humorous award” (28th time 1999)

Smart City Expo World Congress