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Okumura-Funakoshi Lab
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The lab studies natural language processing, which handles language with computers, and dialogue systems.
AboutAbout the lab
Intelligent systems that understand language and work with people
The Okumura-Funakoshi Lab focuses on natural language processing, which deals with language using computers.
It also puts effort into multimodal dialogue systems, knowledge processing, and the construction and evaluation of language resources, covering a wide range from basic to applied research.
Using machine learning extensively, the lab studies summarization, text generation from data, opinion and sentiment analysis, social media analysis, dialogue, and more.
Students find their own research topics based on their interests, and can receive supervision on anything related to natural language processing, dialogue systems, or human-machine interaction.
Key terms
- Natural language processing
- Technology that lets computers understand and produce the language people use in everyday life (natural language)
- Multimodal dialogue systems
- Systems that talk with people using multiple cues, such as voice, facial expressions, and gestures, rather than text alone
- Language resources
- Collections of language data used in research and development, such as organized collections of text or conversations, and dictionaries
NewsLab news
Paper accepted at ACM GROUP 2027
Papers accepted at EMNLP 2026 and Findings of EMNLP
Paper accepted at ACM MM 2026
Paper accepted at Materials Today Communications
A paper by students won the Excellence Award of a Special Interest Group of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI)
ResearchResearch themes
The lab aims to realize intelligent systems that understand language and work with people. It works on computational models that understand and generate language, dialogue between people and systems, reasoning and support that make use of knowledge, and the development of the language resources that underpin research.
*Illustrative imageDialogue systems that read even breathing
For conversation with people to feel natural, not only words but also the timing of when to start speaking and emotions matter. The lab studies predicting turn-taking from respiratory signals and distinguishing the emotions of multiple speakers, and also works on dialogue that supports swallowing rehabilitation.
*Illustrative imageAdding background information to sports commentary
In live commentary on soccer matches, conveying not only the state of the game but also the background of players and teams deepens viewers' understanding. The lab is building a commentary system that uses language models to add background information suited to the moment.
*Illustrative imageTraining language models with less data
Training language models requires large amounts of data and computation. The lab studies ways to train them efficiently, using dataset distillation, which condenses a large dataset into a small one, and active learning, which selects and uses the most valuable data to learn from.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Okumura-Funakoshi Lab consist of faculty, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, research fellows, and administrative assistants.As of 2026
- ProfessorManabu OkumuraPublications ↗
- Associate ProfessorKotaro FunakoshiPublications ↗
- Assistant ProfessorSatoshi KosugiPublications ↗
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Network visualisation incorporating sentiment analysis of the subreddit 'skeptic' from Reddit” Siobhán Grayson / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Dialogue systems that read even breathing: “Telenoid™ R4 (tele-presence robot for communication) by ATR Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory, exhibited at Miraikan ( by Franklin Heijnen)” Franklin Heijnen / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
- Adding background information to sports commentary: “Secretary Kerry Watches an Outdoor Television Playing a European Football Championship Match in Oslo ( )” U.S. Department of State from United States / Public domain (cropped)
- Training language models with less data: “Wikidata in the Linked Open Data cloud” Thomas Shafee / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (篠﨑研究室): “Human voice spectrogram” Dvortygirl, Mysid / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (スラヴァキス研究室): “The manifold paths of biology ( )” UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (中谷研究室): “Stickies to brainstorm Edit.2014.” victorgrigas / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (西尾研究室): “Passive Millimeter Wave Camera (PMMWC) at TRW - GPN” Northrop Grumman Space Technology - Redondo Beach (formerly TRW, Inc)/TRW photographer / Public domain (cropped)
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