HIAS Bridges NEXT

Shaofeng Zheng

Research field:Social Psychology, Cultural Psychology

●What are your current research interests?

How gene and environmental factors (e.g., culture, childhood experience) independently and interactively shape individuals’ empathy and support-seeking

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Writing interesting papers

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Solve problems with a systematic, scientific approach

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Understanding human nature

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

Create my own theory or research field and inspire others to join me

Takashi Katsumata

Research field:European legal history

●What are your current research interests?

Relationship between different laws and validity of local law in the Middle Ages and the early modern period.

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Finding a topic that hasn’t been noticed in previous research in historical materials.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Adding a piece of findings to the accumulated body of studies.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Interest in “ius commune” from a European legal history class.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

To learn to use clear language.

Toshimitsu Aritake

Research field:Statictical machine learning

●What are your current research interests?

I am focusing on machine learning, particularly researching distribution shift aspects such as transfer learning and domain adaptation, and also meta-optimization, which involves learning how to optimize.

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I feel a sense of excitement when I thoroughly understand the problem at hand and come up with models or analytical methods that fit that problem well.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

The pursuit of novelty and self-improvement.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Initially, I was motivated by my admiration for how my mentor and senior colleagues in the lab approached their research. Afterward, I worked at a company, but I couldn’t let go of my desire to become a researcher, so I returned to the path of research.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I aim to advance research on two fronts: addressing practical problems while also tackling mathematically intriguing problems.

Akimune Yoshida

Research field:Comparative Law and Animal Law

●What are your current research interests?

Comparative Legal Culture, Animal’s Legal Status, and Education and Research of Japanese Law in English

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Finding out the relevance between things that seem unrelated.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Improvement of arguments through discussion across time and space.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

My respectful mentors and Seminaristen changed my life.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

My future goal is to contribute to academia and society.

Marco Nutta

Research field:Marketing

●What are your current research interests?

Branding, Brand coolness, consumer behavior, foodservice and lodging marketing

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Learning a new skill each time I start a project.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Discovering the unknown and confirming or denying assumptions

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

My mother because she is a researcher and I always wanted to be like her.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I would like to be well-known for brand coolness research. Additionally, my field lacks theoretical development and I would like to one day to contribute to the development of a new theory specific to hospitality and tourism.

Julia Mariko Jacoby

Research field:Early modern Japanese environmental and economic history

●What are your current research interests?

I currently research the complex natural resource networks of early modern Japanese villages and how they continued into the Meiji period.

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I love to connect with people from the past through reading sources and to connect with colleagues about research.

●What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Research, for me, is an opportunity to never stop learning.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I’ve always been curious and loved analyzing things.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I want to be a researcher who brings people together internationally.

Ryoya Yamasaki

Research field:Machine Learning, Statistics

●What are your current research interests?

Ordinal regression, Sparse modeling

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I like being able to decide what to do by myself.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

It’s just something I like to do, but I have to be cognizant of a job 🙂

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I got hooked on ‘PSYCHO-PASS’ and ‘Ghost in the Shell’ when I was in a high school. This led me to informatics and research.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I want to do research that will still be cited 100 years from now.

Asako Toyama

Research field:Experimental psychology , Computational Behavioral Science

●What are your current research interests?

Decision-making, reinforcement learning models, emotion, physiological responses, computational psychiatry

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I enjoy being able to approach topics of interest in my own way while learning along the way. I also find it exciting to hear about other researchers’ work.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Trial and error driven by curiosity

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I initially became interested in memory, which led me to study psychology. Over time, my research interests expanded to various other topics.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I aspire to be a researcher who integrates multiple perspectives—such as cognitive science, computational modeling, and psychology—to deepen our understanding of human behavior and the mind.

Makoto Kadowaki

Research field:Industrial Organization, Innovation Economics

●What are your current research interests?

Economic analysis of intellectual property rights, the relationship between information disclosure and technological progress, economic effects of platforms

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I always enjoy it. (I also enjoy when I’m not doing research)

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

A meritorious deed regardless of productivity

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I was curious whether it was something one could become simply by trying, so I gave it a shot

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

The kind whose opinion people think “Well, whether I agree or not, I should at least hear what this person has to say”

Etienne Makdissi

Research field:Family and Labor Economics

●What are your current research interests?

Marriage Formation and Location Choice

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Satisfying my curiosity

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Improving our understanding of society

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Desire to explain why society is structured as it is, and to try to find out how to improve it.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

Better understanding of the relationship between family and socio-economic structures.