NEWS
Rakuten Institute of Technology at CCSE 2019
On July 13th, the 2019 Conference on Computer Science for Enterprise, CCSE 2019, was held at the University of Tokyo Ito Hall. The conference is dedicated to corporate research and this year was the second time it was held.
CCSE allows company research to be brought beyond the scope of the company they belong to, and to be discussed in a forum similar to academic research. For the company researchers, this lets them advance their research by providing a platform to discuss with students and other companies, and for the audience it is providing an opportunity to think about joint research and their career.
This year, more than 800 people participated, and 60 people from 23 companies and 2 universities took the stage, a doubling from the previous year. Rakuten Institute of Technology also sponsored this conference, and four people participated as speakers.
Soh Masuko, Senior Manager of the Future Merchant Design Laboratory, participated in two sessions. In the joint session “Attractors and Challenges of Corporate Research”, he acted as facilitator for a discussion with three panelists who turned from university researchers to corporate researchers about all the changes it meant. In another joint session, on “Methods for Selecting Research Themes”, together with panelists who have long been engaged in research and development in companies, he introduced the different characteristics of Rakuten Institute of Technology from the development of a research theme to the final execution.
Additionally, Tianyu Li, one of our Tokyo based research scientists, held a presentation named “AIris: Targeting Prospective Users by Empowering Rakuten Data”. He introduced our research on the AI agent “Rakuten AIris” that allows us to understand consumption behavior more deeply by analyzing the consumption data of about 97 million Rakuten IDs.
Hiromi Ochiai, one of our project coordinators, also joined a session on “How to Maximize Research Achievements through Multifunctional Support: PR, HR and Coordination”. She talked about how to work with researchers, widely disseminate research, raise awareness, and negotiate various ways to maximize research achievements, based on her experience working at Rakuten Institute of Technology.
All of the sessions on the day were extremely insightful and interesting. We hope to be back again next time. For more information in Japanese, see the links below.
Joint Session: “Attractors and Challenges of Corporate Research”
Joint Session: “Methods for Selecting Research Themes”
