Systems, Man & Cybernetics - January 2017 - 35

are lucky, we can use the delete button, but most of the time we have cannot choose to ignore the data stream
that is forced through our sensory system toward our brains. Intelligence
and consciousness provides us with
the ability to extract meaning from
the information entering our senso-

EEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) Magazine in troduces Hideyuki Takagi, a
professor in the Faculty of Design at
Kyushu University, Japan.
SMC Magazine: Describe your current position, research areas, and
interests.
Takagi: I am a professor in the Faculty of Design at Kyushu University,
Japan; a member of the IEEE SMCS
Board of Governors; and the chair of
the IEEE SMCS Japan Chapter and
the IEEE SMCS Technical Committee
(TC) on Soft Computing.
My research focus is computational intelligence. The featured direction
is humanized computational intelligence; I am trying to combine human
capabilities and those of computational intelligence. Interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) is one such
approach. My featured IEC research
includes analyzing human characteristics by analyzing the characteristics
of the optimized target system by the
IEC user-IEC for human science, in
other words, while the majority of IEC
research is applying IEC to new applications and developing methods for
improving IEC performance.
SMC Magazine: What motivates you
to do research, teach, and volunteer?
Takagi: I wanted to be a researcher when I was a high school student
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2016.2623870
Date of publication: 17 January 2017

ry channels and helps to distinguish
the meaningful from the meaningless.
By overloading our senses, we may
gradually lose this ability. Brain-inspired technologies and human-centered computing can help to ensure
healthy progress for humanity far into
the future.

References
[1] R. Kozma and W. J. Freeman, Cognitive Phase
Transitions in the Cerebral Cortex-Enhancing the
Neuron Doctrine by Modeling Neural Fields. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2016.
[2] R. Kozma, "The race to new mathematics of brains
and computers," in Proc. IEEE 2013 Int. Joint Conf.
Neural Networks, Dallas, TX, pp. 21-23.

Hideyuki Takagi:
Member of the SMCS
Board of Governors
the development of a system from beginning to end instead of influencing
others, I would have been an engineer.
My educational motivation is
rather opposite of that of research,
and the growth of my supervised students delights me as if I completed
their craftwork.
As for volunteering, I feel that I
must repay the academic societies
that provide us opportunities for our
research activities by organizing conferences, publishing journals, and volunteering my time and talent to them.
takagi states that he is often
interested in "throwing the first
stone" in a research area.

because of the divergent nature of
research. An individual's research influences other researchers, and subsequently their work also influences still
other researchers. This expanding and
broadening influence toward the end
of practical real-world applications
indirectly but widely is my research
motivation, and I feel it is my purpose
in life. If I had preferred to complete
Ja nu a r y 2017

SMC Magazine: How did you get
started as a volunteer (in the IEEE
and elsewhere)?
Takagi: The first trigger was when
I was asked to start the TC on Soft
Computing by Dr. Michael H. Smith
(president of the SMCS from 2002 to
2003), and I have served as its chair
since 1998.
My first trigger to volunteer for the
Japanese academic society was when
I was elected as the Kyushu Chapter chair of the current Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent

IEEE SyStEmS, man, & CybErnEtICS magazInE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Systems, Man & Cybernetics - January 2017