Thinking outside of the box – focusing on boundaries between multiple heterogeneous technologies to build new attractive technology

When I was an undergraduate student majoring in mathematical engineering, I aspired to combine my major with robots to create a new exciting work. So, I applied for the exhibition hosted by my department at my university festival, and I worked as a project leader for over two months. I focused on robots that solved Rubik's Cubes as my goal. A robot solving 3×3 Rubik's Cubes had already been exhibited at the same exhibition two years previously, so I teamed up with my university classmates to go one step further and develop a robot solving 5×5 Cubes. I was blessed with very cool members. Two of the members had experience in mechanical work. Another one loved algebra. Another one was good at image processing programs. Another completed the program controlling the robot arms though he had no programming experience. With these members, I spent a lot of my days and nights in the project room at my university. Triggered by this development experience, I realized the attractiveness of combining technologies that seem unrelated to each other, and I started to think that my future job would be to create new technology by integrating technologies from different fields. I believe that Fujitsu is a company whose employees can do outstanding research. I listened to opinions from various people while I was looking for a job, and I intuitively thought that if I joined Fujitsu, I would be able to challenge a large enterprise project with a team of people from various backgrounds. I decided to join Fujitsu based on this intuition. In retrospect, I think that joining Fujitsu was an excellent choice of all the possible options, enabling me to expand my potential.

When I consider my research direction now, I realize that I don't aim to do the same things as someone else. I don't negatively mean this at all. It's just that I'm attracted to making new marks in previously uncharted areas. My current research activities genuinely reflect my ambition to achieve this. During my fourth year at Fujitsu, I hypothesized with a first-year junior colleague that there would be a greater need for blockchains that interworks with multiple heterogeneous blockchains in the future. This hypothesis was triggered by a conversation with a Fujitsu sales department person who directly exchanged opinions with their customers and knew what happened in the business society. It's a hot research area in the current world, but at the time, the blockchain field was still in its infancy, and no one was aware of this need. I thought it was an excellent opportunity and started prototyping with the junior colleague.

At the end of the prototype development phase, we realized its crucial technical defects. However, it was difficult for us to resolve them since I was still a fourth-year worker and my skills were entirely lacking. The breakthrough came from creating a team with experienced senior colleagues who brought their experience and knowledge. They enabled us finally to resolve those difficulties and rebuild a new technology. After this, we gathered ideas from inside and outside the team, working hard to improve our technology. As we were absorbed in overcoming the challenges at hand, it has steadily grown, and just three years later, it developed into an open-source project with Accenture. And in the following year, it was accepted as an official project by Hyperledger, a large open-source community in the blockchain world – all just four years after we started! Researchers and developers from entirely different backgrounds in technology, majors, knowledge, and experience came together to overcome enormous challenges. These challenges could not be achieved on my own, so I was driven by the thrill of its scope and diversity.

In January 2022, I was relocated to Fujitsu Research of America, Inc., the research branch of Fujitsu in the United States, ready to undertake the overseas expansion of the project that I have been involved with from the outset. I have intended to expand into the United States for several years, finally making it to the starting line. When I was in Japan, I often communicated with American engineers remotely. Still, there were many barriers and difficulties to cross-border working between Japan and the US. That has all changed now, and I am thrilled to be able to communicate directly with people in America, working alongside each other in the same place to make great strides together.

In the US, my focus is to kick off by getting people to use our technology and listen to their direct feedback. I believe this will be a key to completing the project. I'm on the starting line now, but the challenge has just begun. It's hard to face new challenges every day, but it's fun!

One of my goals in my research career is to achieve interesting technology and society as attractive as "Moonbow." Moonbow is a rainbow created by the moonlight on a rainy night. It would be fun to find an ordinary rainbow, but Moonbow is an entirely rare rainbow that can be observed only when many conditions are satisfied. That's why people who are lucky enough to take one look at it are so impressed. One of my big dreams is to create a new technology that will act as a bridge between different fields by superimposing the colors of technologies in multiple areas. I will be pleased if people worldwide use our technology and feel, "That's interesting!" If those emotions are piled up, I believe there will be "a new standard society" in the future.