Shaofeng Zheng
Research field:Social Psychology, Cultural Psychology
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
Toshimitsu Aritake
Research field:Statictical machine learning
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.
Marco Nutta
Research field:Marketing
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.
Ryoya Yamasaki
Research field:Machine Learning, Statistics
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
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.

