Rakuten Institute of Technology
- Industry-Academia Projects Administered by Rakuten Institute of Technology Support Students, the Future of the Internet
- In 2005, Rakuten established the Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research institution dedicated to predicting the future of the Internet and creating new technologies. The institute supports activities that make use of the expertise areas and interests of researchers, and seeks to develop progressive technologies that apply to the Internet as a whole, transcending Rakuten itself, and lead to innovative services. As a part of its efforts, the institute is strengthening industry-academia partnerships, and actively conducting activities to bring about new forms of collaboration with the academic knowledge and personnel of an Internet company.
Industry-Academia Partnerships
Industry-academia partnerships administered by the Rakuten Institute of Technology include joint research with various universities, the Rakuten R&D Symposium, an annual academic conference for announcing research findings, and activities in support of academic associations in the field of information engineering.
- Joint Research with Universities
- Joint research was conducted with the University of Electro-Communications on natural language processing utilizing feedback from customers of Rakuten Travel, our comprehensive travel site. A joint research project was also conducted with Keio Research Institute at SFC on long tail concept, utilizing purchase data from Rakuten Books, our online bookseller. These joint projects were backed by massive amounts of data from the Rakuten Group.
- Japan's First Symposium on Future Internet Technologies Held by a Private-Sector Company
- The Rakuten R&D Symposium represents the first time in Japan that a private-sector company has held an academic conference for considering the technologies and future research that will create new Internet services. The symposium, held once a year, aims to support technological innovation by researchers. It gathers young researchers together under one roof to announce ideas and findings, on the basis of which various discussions take place.
- At the Rakuten R&D Symposium 2009, the second year of the conference, some 140 researchers gathered and actively debated the research findings of around 20 people, which included poster-based presentations. A review committee was also established for this year's symposium to review research from an academic perspective, and actively assess the practicality and feasibility of ideas from a business standpoint.
| Rakuten Research and Development Symposium 2009 review Committee | |
|---|---|
| Hirotake Abe | Assistant professor, Faculty of Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology |
| Takashi Iba | Associate Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University |
| Rikio Onai | Professor, Faculty of Electro-Communications, University of Electro-Communications |
| Kazutoshi Sumiya | Professor, University of Hyogo, School of Human Science and Environment |
| Satoshi Sekine | Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, New York University |
| Keiji Takeda | Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information, Keio University |
| Katsumi Tanaka | Professor, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University |
| Jiro Tanaka | Professor, Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba |
| Shigeru Chiba | Professor, Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology |
| Hidehiko Masuhara | Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo |
| Hayato Yamana | Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University |
| Akinori Yonezawa | Professor, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo |
| Masaya Mori | Rakuten Institute of Technology, Rakuten, Inc. |
| Yukihiro Matsumoto | Rakuten Institute of Technology, Rakuten, Inc. |
| Hiromi Hirano | Rakuten Institute of Technology, Rakuten, Inc. |
- Support and Collaboration with Academic Associations Creating New Technologies
- In 2009, the Rakuten Institute of Technology was a special co-sponsor of the ACM-ICPC Asia Tokyo Regional Contest, one of the world's preeminent programming contests. Sponsored by the Japan branch of the U.S.-based Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), the event has become a well-established tradition, having been held 34 times as of fiscal 2009.
- The institute co-sponsored the event as it holds the potential to help raise Internet technology levels in Japan, and supports students of IT who are striving to take their programming techniques to a world-leading level.
- Partnering with WebDB Forum
- In 2009, the Rakuten Institute of Technology further strengthened industry-academia ties by helping to sponsor WebDB Forum 2009, an academic conference held by three organizations, the Information Processing Society of Japan's Database System Group, the Database Society of Japan, and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers' Technical Committee on Data Engineering. The institute both sponsored and collaborated with the forum. On Rakuten's recommendation, three researchers who produced exceptional research first announced at the Rakuten R&D Symposium 2009 gave presentations at the forum. This was the first time we collaborated in an academic conference, and we intend to strengthen such participation in the future.
