Akihiro Kishimoto

Akihiro Kishimoto

Awards and Honors

International Research Awards

  1. 1st IEEE Open Software Services Award (Professional Award) for Generative Toolkit for Scientific Discovery (GT4SD), 6/2022
    • Developed by Matteo Manica, Joris Cadow, Dimitrios Christofidellis, Ashish Dave, Jannis Born, Dean Clarke, Yves Gaetan Nana Teukam, Samuel Hoffman, Matthew Buchan, Enara Vijil, Tim Donovan, Hsiang-Han Hsu, Federico Zipoli, Oliver Schilter, Akihiro Kishimoto, Lisa Hamada, Inkit Padhi, Karl Wehden, Lauren McHugh, Alexy Khrabrov, Payel Das, Seiji Takeda and John Smith, 6/2022
  2. Senior Member Status, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2/2022
  3. Best paper award at the 13th Advances in Computer Games, 11/2011
    • Accelerated UCT and Its Application to Two-Player Games, written by Junichi Hashimoto, Akihiro Kishimoto, Kazuki Yoshizoe and Kokolo Ikeda.
  4. Best paper award at the 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS’09), 8/2009
    • Scalable, Parallel Best-First Search for Sequential Optimal Planning, written by Akihiro Kishimoto, Alex Fukunaga, and Adi Botea.
  5. ChessBase best-publication award for the year 2007 from International Computer Games Association (ICGA), 4/2008
    • Checkers Is Solved in journal Science, written by Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Björnsson, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Robert Lake, Paul Lu, and Steve Sutphen.
  6. ChessBase best-publication award for the year 2005 from International Computer Games Association (ICGA), 9/2006
    • Correct and Efficient Search Algorithms in the Presence of Repetitions, written by Akihiro Kishimoto (Ph.D.thesis).
  7. Distinguished paper award at the 19th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’05), 7/2005
    • Solving Checkers, written by Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Björnsson, Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Robert Lake, Paul Lu, and Steve Sutphen.

Domestic Research Awards

  1. Industrial Achievement Award for the Year 2023, Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) (情報処理学会業績賞), 5/2024
    • Industrial Application of AI-based Material Development Solutions, awarded to Seiji Takeda, Akihiro Kishimoto, Lisa Hamada, Indra Priyadarsini, Hajime Shinohara
  2. Field Innovation Award (Gold), Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (人工知能学会 現場イノベーション賞 金賞), 6/2021
    • Contribution to the Molecule Generation Experience, a platform for molecular generation and application to material industry, developed by Seiji Takeda, Hsiang-Han Hsu, Toshiyuki Hama, Akihiro Kishimoto and Daiju Nakano
  3. The Young Scientists’ Prize, The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (文部科学大臣表彰 若手科学者賞), 4/2012
  4. Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) Annual Conference Award (人工知能学会全国大会優秀賞), 10/2009
  5. Computer Shogi Association (CSA) Research Award, 5/2008
    • For developing correct and efficient search algorithms applied to Shogi.
  6. Finalist for outstanding Ph.D. thesis award in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, 3/2006
  7. Best paper prize, Canadian AI Conference (AI’02), 5/2002
    • Transposition Table Driven Work Scheduling in Distributed Game-Tree Search, written by Akihiro Kishimoto and Jonathan Schaeffer.

Other External Honors

  1. Distinguished Program Committee Member, 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’19), 7/2019
  2. Published an article titled Go bot, Go - AIs Have Mastered Chess. Will Go Be Next?, written by Jonathan Schaeffer, Martin Müller and Akihiro Kishimoto at IEEE Spectrum, 7/2014
  3. Selected as an invited speaker at the Japanese-French Frontiers of Science Symposium (JFFoS 2009)
  4. Runners-up (ranked 10th) in the breakthrough of the year 2007 in journal Science, 12/2007
    • Checkers Is Solved, written by Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Björnsson, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Robert Lake, Paul Lu, and Steve Sutphen

IBM Internal Awards

  1. Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, 2023
  2. IBM Japan General Manager Award, 2022
  3. Research Innovation Award, 2019
  4. Master Inventor Award, 2019

World Computer Shogi Championships

I used to be involved in Yasushi Tanase’s ISshogi project together with Norifumi Gotoh, and Ayumu Nagai from 1997 until 2005. We developed one of the best computer Shogi (Japanese chess) programs. I mainly worked on a high-performance tsume-shogi solver.

Our shogi software was sold as commercial products (Todai Shogi Series, 東大将棋シリーズ) on Windows, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and so on for more than 10 years. Below are our results on computer shogi championships:

  1. 4th prize out of top 8 programs at the 3rd International Shogi Forum (ISF), 10/2005
  2. 3rd prize out of 39 participants at the 15th World Computer Shogi Championship (WCSC), 5/2005
  3. 3rd prize out of 43 participants at the 14th WCSC, 5/2004
  4. 1st prize out of 45 participants at the 13th WCSC, 5/2003
  5. 1st prize out of top 8 programs at the 2nd ISF, 10/2002
  6. 2nd prize out of 50 participants at the 12th WCSC, 5/2002
  7. 1st prize out of 55 participants at the 11th WCSC, 3/2001
  8. 1st prize out of 45 participants at the 10th WCSC, 3/2000
  9. 3rd prize out of top 8 programs at the 1st ISF, 6/1999
  10. 5th prize out of 40 participants at the 9th WCSC, 3/1999
  11. 1st prize out of 35 participants at the 8th WCSC, 2/1998
  12. 9th prize out of 33 participants at the 7th WCSC, 2/1997