“My Life Has Been Lucky!”
Presentation Abstract:
I entered the University of Tokyo and proceeded to a newly established Mathematical Engineering course at the Faculty of Engineering, which accepted only five students. That was the beginning of my fortunate journey. In that course, the professors were passionately striving to explore their research fields in mathematical engineering toward new academic frontiers. Observing their great efforts, I learned the art of pursuing my own research freely without any constraint by conventional frameworks.
After earning a Ph.D., I started to contemplate the mechanisms of the brain and the nature of information at Kyushu University. At that time, I never imagined that my early study on machine learning there would in future lead to research connected to a Nobel Prize in Physics and grow into a major trend in artificial intelligence. The core of my research focused on artificial intelligence, mathematical neuroscience, and information geometry, all of which took ten or even twenty years until finally gaining worldwide recognition.
The greatest fortune in my life was being in such an environment to enjoy the freedom to fully immerse myself in unconstrained research driven solely by my own curiosity.
Dr. Shun-ichi Amari will be introduced by Prof. Rose Yu of UC San Diego.
Shun-ichi Amari is the 2025 Kyoto Prize Laureate in Advanced Technology. He has conducted pioneering research in artificial neural networks and established the field of information geometry, which studies statistical models using the techniques of differential geometry, thereby proposing many important theories. His contributions to both theory and application, influencing various fields, are of major significance.