Please tell us about your research.

I am researching software engineering. Software engineering is the study of how to create quality software efficiently and with as little cost as possible.
For example, in our daily lives, software is contained in smartphones, computers, and various other home appliances. This is a field that has a large demand in society, so it is very important to create them efficiently.

In Japan today, people are talking about the "cliff of 2025". This means that there is currently a shortage of IT personnel, and if this trend continues, the supply of software will not be able to keep up with the demand from society. It is predicted that this will lead to an economic loss of about 12 trillion yen every year. In order to alleviate the negative aspects of such a shortage of IT personnel, my research focuses on the creation of technologies that make software production as efficient as possible.
I am particularly interested in research on software source code.
If a machine can automatically fix bugs in software, it will require less human intervention for fixing bugs. I am researching such automated program repair. At this moment, it is possible to fix bugs of one or two lines.
Automated program repair is one of the hot topics in software engineering and is being researched by companies like Google and MS.

I think there is a great atmosphere of nurturing students in this lab.
As a professor, what do you do to guide students?

The students are all very good problem solvers, so once I decide on the first assignment, I don't go into too much detail. I ask them to report their progress once a week, but they come up with the specific methods on their own. So I try not to give them too much detailed guidance on research methods and procedures.
There are two main ways to formulate the initial problem. One is to find problems from research papers, and the other is to find problems by asking what companies want to solve through joint research.
When it comes to papers, there are trends in research. We need to know what papers have been published recently, so that we can understand and analyze what kind of research is required now. Without knowing the trends, it is difficult to decide on the next research theme.
Another method to decide on a research theme is to grasp society's needs. In this lab, we are currently conducting several joint research projects, and I think they will also become needs-oriented research.

In addition to research, in the past few years, I have been encouraging students to make presentations at international conferences, publish journal papers, and other external activities. I think that international conferences in particular are a good stimulus for students. When I ask them to give a presentation in English, they usually say "ugh" at first, but I try to convince them that it will be beneficial. I think that doing something like that while they are still students will give them courage before they go out into the world.

What I think is a good trend among our students is that almost all of them have presented their research overseas in the past few years. Because of this trend, I think that the newly assigned students think that giving a presentation in English is not a special thing, but a normal thing that everyone does.
When undergraduate students write their graduation thesis, I sometimes get master's students to check them, so they are able to build vertical connections within the lab. The students share information among themselves, and the graduate students take care of undergraduate students voluntarily. I would be happy if presenting at intenational conferences and publishing journal papers in English would become a normal thing.
Before the COVID-19 epidemic, some students would give three presentations abroad before graduating with a master's degree. They would start going to presentations since their fourth year as undergraduates, so that's a pace of about once a year.

In many cases, it is not the case that the contents of the research students worked on as a student itself are not always be put to use after they get jobs. Some students may do different jobs after entering a company. However, the process of working diligently on research as a student involves a lot of investigating, presentations, and writing. I believe that students' abilities are enhanced through such experiences. I think it would be a good idea for students to enhance their abilities in this graduate course, and then apply them to their work and become active. The content of the research itself may not be very useful, but I think it is very important to do research that students are passionate about. After all, it's more important to be absorbed in something than to work hard.