Results - Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter Award 2023

2024 (The Fourth) Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter Award Recipients

December 27, 2024

Since FY 2020, Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter Awards identify and honor leaders of the field of human-computer interaction. We present awards in two categories:

  • Lifetime Community Contribution Award:
    Lifetime Community Contribution Award is presented to individuals for outstanding contributions to the cumulative contributions to the development of the field.
  • Distinguished Young Researcher Award:
    Lifetime Community Contribution Award is presented to young individuals for significant research contributions as well as outstanding contributions to the development of the field.

The awards committee selected following recipients from the submitted award nominations after strict review.

Lifetime Community Contribution Award

Yoshifumi Kitamura (Deputy Director and Professor, Research Institute of Electrical Communication / Director, Interdisciplinary ICT Research Center for Cyber and Real Spaces, Tohoku University)

Yoshifumi Kitamura has been conducting research mainly in the fields of virtual reality and 3D user interfaces. He has also been actively involved in organizing academic conferences, and has been involved in expanding and developing the research community. For example, the IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces, which he established in 2006, attracted about 200 participants every year until it was merged into the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces in 2018. He also served as the Steering Committee Chair for the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, and contributed to the development of the field. SIGGRAPH Asia (an international premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques), where he served as Conference Chair in 2015, was also a success, attracting more than 7,000 participants, paving the way for a regular triennial conference in Japan. In addition, he led the effort to invite the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems to be first held in Japan, and served as the General Chair of the conference, which was held online in 2021. The success of the conference, which attracted more than 5,000 participants, the largest in CHI's history, led to the first-ever CHI conference in Japan, to be held in Yokohama, in 2025. He was also the Chair of the ACM SIGCHI Asian Development Committee, the Chair of the Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter, and has been the Japan Representative to IFIP TC-13 (Human-Computer Interaction), the International Federation for Information Processing under UNESCO.

In this way, Professor Kitamura has contributed greatly to the development of the field through his own research and community activities. He has also promoted activities that connect the global and Japanese research communities, and has worked to enhance Japan's presence in the international research community. Professor Kitamura's contributions to the development of the academic field are significant, and it is Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter’s privilege to honor him with this award.

Distinguished Young Researcher Award

Yuki Koyama (Senior Researcher, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) / Technical Advisor, Graphinica, Inc.)

Dr. Koyama conducts research at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Graphics (CG), with a focus on "Computational Design" using mathematical optimization techniques. He has presented his work at top-tier international conferences such as CHI, UIST, and SIGGRAPH (Asia). Notably, he has published 11 papers at these venues (including 7 as first author), which shows his originality. Among his first-authored papers, those employing "Human-in-the-Loop Bayesian Optimization" at SIGGRAPH 2017, SIGGRAPH 2020, and UIST 2022 have received special attention, winning 25 awards, including the IPSJ/ACM Award for Early Career Contributions to Global Research.

Dr. Koyama's research has made substantial contributions to the founding and growth of the newly established "Computational Interaction" subcommittee at CHI 2021, further establishing his position as a pioneer in the field. He also contributed to two academic books published in 2018 and 2022, each with authors from around the world, and became the first Japanese researcher to serve multiple terms as the Associate Chair of this subcommittee. In addition, he actively supported the research community by serving as a course instructor on Computational Interaction at CHI 2021.

He has also played a key role in organizing international conferences, serving as an Assistant to the Technical Program Chairs at CHI 2021. In addition, he serves as a technical advisor to an animation production company, addressing issues directly connected to real-world applications. Through these activities, Dr. Koyama has demonstrated a broad impact both academically and practically, and is expected to continue making cross-disciplinary contributions in the future.