HIAS Bridges NEXT (AP)

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

●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

●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

●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.