Labs in The University of Tokyo, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences

0 student voices

A cognitive science lab that uses experiments and computation to uncover the mechanisms behind human thinking and insight.

Ueda Lab studies the mechanisms of human cognitive activity, focusing on higher-order cognition such as judgment, thinking, and creativity. The lab also studies how human cognition and behavior affect the surrounding society and artifacts. Depending on the theme, the lab chooses among methods such as psychological experiments, brain measurement, behavioral measurement, simulations using computers and robots, and participant observation. Much of the research bridges the humanities and sciences, so the lab welcomes applicants from humanities backgrounds as well as those from science backgrounds.

#Cognitive science #Higher cognition #Human-artifact interaction

0 student voices

A lab that uses machine learning to make computer graphics and physics simulation faster.

Kanai Lab conducts research at the intersection of computer graphics, physics simulation, and machine learning. Drawing on machine learning techniques, the lab works on making computer graphics and physics simulation faster and more efficient. The lab keeps applications to games and VR in view.

#Computer graphics #Physics simulation #Machine learning

0 student voices

A lab that builds smarter AI through games such as shogi, Catan, and Werewolf.

Kaneko Lab is a game AI lab that studies artificial intelligence (AI) using games as its subject. Games have long been studied as a good environment for testing how smart an AI is. Today, the best AI surpasses humans not only in Go and shogi but also in games like poker, where players cannot see their opponents' hands. The lab studies the ability of AI to understand the world and other agents through challenges such as reinforcement learning, search, and negotiation and communication in games like Werewolf and Catan.

#Game AI #Reinforcement learning #Search

0 student voices

The lab uses infant development as a clue to uncover how the human mind works.

The Hiraki Lab conducts research aimed at elucidating human cognitive activity and applying it to engineering and society. Its projects on developmental mechanisms in infants and young children, the cognition of time and space in the brain, and the effects of robots and media on people run in connection with one another. The lab values three things: "empirical research with humans (especially infants and young children)," "building computational models," and "feeding findings back into real-world society."

#Developmental cognitive neuroscience #Infants #Cognitive science

0 student voices

An artificial intelligence lab that builds systems that look ahead before they act.

The Fukunaga Lab studies systems that act while looking ahead. Its targets include mechanisms by which autonomous agents plan their own actions, and intelligent systems that automatically solve complex combinatorial optimization problems. Its fundamental research centers on implementing algorithms that can actually be put to practical use. The lab also works on using machine learning to improve the performance of such algorithms, and on action planning with large language models.

#Automated planning #Search algorithms #Combinatorial optimization

0 student voices

The lab studies science and technology studies (STS), examining issues that arise where science and technology meet society.

Fujigaki Lab conducts research in science and technology studies (STS), science and technology policy, and scientometrics. STS examines how science and technology can be used to build a better society, and it requires broad knowledge spanning the humanities and the sciences. The lab addresses issues that arise where science and technology meet society, such as environmental problems, medical problems, and problems that emerge in the information society. It studies multiple cases using methods such as policy document analysis and quantitative analysis.

#Science and technology studies #Science and technology policy #Scientometrics

0 student voices

The lab researches technology in which humans and AI collaborate to support better decision-making.

The Baba Lab studies technology for "human-AI collaboration." Focusing on individual and group decision-making, the lab builds technology that enables AI to provide appropriate support to humans. The lab develops methods for aggregating opinions that take the diversity of values into account, as well as apps that support discussions everyone can agree on. It also works on research that incorporates human knowledge into machine learning, and on mechanisms that ask humans to answer questions AI cannot.

#Human-AI collaboration #Human computation #Decision support

0 student voices

The lab develops machine learning methods for understanding the big picture of large-scale data.

Matsushima Lab studies the foundations of machine learning for understanding data. Data of many kinds is generated in society every day, including urban infrastructure, healthcare and health, marketing, and materials. The lab studies techniques that express the analysis results obtained from such large-scale data as knowledge in order to understand the big picture of complex data, along with the optimization algorithms needed for them. Students can work on both the fundamental theory of machine learning and its practical applications.

#Machine learning #Data mining #Statistical causal discovery

0 student voices

A programming lab that explores how to transform programs and how to build them automatically.

The Morihata Lab studies the fundamental theory of programming and its applications. The lab believes that even now, as automatic programming with large language models (LLMs) becomes widespread, gaps remain, such as lightweight automation and program verification. The lab's strength is program transformation: radically rewriting programs to make them faster, or producing complex programs from simple ones. Its research is grounded in program calculation, an approach that builds programs step by step, much as one solves an equation by manipulating expressions.

#Program transformation #Program synthesis #Program calculation

0 student voices

福本研究室 (introduction coming soon)

Science and technology studies (STS); science and technology policy; public administration; science and society, researchers, universities, research evaluation, public values, bureaucratic red tape