Join our group at UTokyo!

I welcome motivated students and researchers interested in machine learning and LLMs to join our group. I'm currently interested in the following research areas:

• AI evaluation: LLM contamination, irreducible error estimation, benchmark design, data-centric methods, etc.
• Scalable supervision: scalable oversight, superhuman model eval/training, weak supervision, reward hacking, etc.
• Open-endedness: agentic systems, evolutionary algorithms, quality-diversity, etc.

Please also check our recent publications to get a sense of our research interests and research directions.

If you have any questions about joining our group, feel free to contact me. I attend AI conferences such as ICLR, NeurIPS, and ICML at least once a year, so let me know if you'd like to meet and chat.

Ways to Join the Lab

I can supervise or mentor students or work with researchers through the following opportunities:

Postdocs

I do not currently have funded postdoc openings at UTokyo. However, I'm happy to hear from self-funded candidates (e.g., JSPS or other fellowships). If you are planning to apply to such programs, please feel free to email me. I may have funded postdoc openings in the future, so let me know if you are interested so I can keep you informed if such opportunities arise.

Graduate students (PhD)

I supervise PhD students in Department of Complexity Science and Engineering (Kashiwa Campus) and Department of Computer Science (Hongo Campus) at the University of Tokyo.

If you are interested in applying, I would appreciate it if you could first review our recent publications at UTokyo to see whether our papers resonate with you. If you feel the vision and research directions of the lab are aligned with your research interests, please review the official guidelines at the links above and feel free to contact me with your CV, academic transcripts (for bachelor and master degrees), any previous papers you have published, and a few-page research proposal. Don't include a timeline in the proposal as it is usually less informative for pre-screening and is not needed. If you have questions before preparing a proposal, feel free to reach out.

I also welcome working professionals who plan to pursue a PhD while employed (industry-based PhD). If this applies to you, please feel free to get in touch.

Please note that I do not accept students through the University track of MEXT, but I do welcome applications for the Embassy track.

Graduate students (Master's)

For Master's course, I supervise students in Department of Complexity Science and Engineering, and I co-supervise students with Prof. Masashi Sugiyama in Department of Computer Science.

Prospective master students should have a strong foundation in mathematics and coding:

• Mathematics. Students should already be very comfortable with statistics, linear algebra, and calculus. A concise refresher is Mathematics for Machine Learning (freely available).
• Coding. Strong Python programming skills are essential. Depending on the research topic, experience with training/fine-tuning deep networks or LLMs and experience with LLM inference is required.

4th year undergraduates

I co-supervise undergraduate thesis students with Prof. Masashi Sugiyama from the Department of Information Science at the University of Tokyo.

Interns / Research Students

I usually don't accept interns or research students at the University of Tokyo, with a few exceptions (such as Embassy track of MEXT scholarship or opportunities for already admitted students who is waiting to enroll).

However for 1st–3rd year undergraduates, I may have the chance to mentor students in Japanese universities through the RIKEN-AIP Undergraduate Research Program (PI: Prof. Masashi Sugiyama, Imperfect Information Learning Team, Nihonbashi Office). See Japanese official guide.

Some information about the Lab

• We are a sub-group within Machine Learning and Statistical Data Analysis Lab (mslab), and we work closely with Prof. Masashi Sugiyama's lab and Prof. Naoto Yokoya's lab.
• All lab meetings and seminars are conducted in English, so students from abroad can join us without any Japanese proficiency.
• For computing resources, we have access to Miyabi Supercomputer System, Wisteria Supercomputer System, mslab GPU servers, and occassionally cloud GPUs (e.g., Lambda Labs).
• We have lab seminars on Mondays and Wednesdays (each is around 2 hours). There are no mandatory lab hours outside of seminars.
• Day-to-day communication and 1-on-1 meetings are conducted in English or Japanese, depending on the preference of the student.
• I am the main supervisor for only a few students, so I typically have 1-on-1 meetings frequently, e.g., once a week, but this can vary depending on the student's needs and progress.
• Our labs are located in Kashiwa and Hongo. The Kashiwa campus offers a peaceful research environment with beautiful Japanese gardens and traditional tea houses nearby. The Hongo campus is in central Tokyo, providing easy access to city life.
• Currently all PhD students in our lab receive good financial support! However, I cannot make any promises since it may depend on my future grants/funding.

Lab photos and campus life