Lab for Innovative Infrastructure Systems

[2018/09/20]

On 20th September, the graduation ceremony for Tokyo Institute of Technology in the fall semester was held. Mr. Azarel (M2) graduated from Fukuda Lab. He will continue his PhD studies in our lab. We look forward to working with him in the future!

[2018/09/25]

In the first lab seminar of the second semester, Mr. Kobayashi (D1), who will be staying at the Fukuda Lab for the next six months, gave a presentation. He presented his research on train delays, including multi-agent simulations for delay countermeasures, which he has been doing at Shibaura Institute of Technology.

Summer vacation is over and lab seminars have started again, and we held a welcome party for new members, Ms. Wang (M1) and Mr. Kobayashi (D1) from the Shibaura Institute of Technology!

We also celebrated Dr. Fukuda’s birthday with a small surprise. Happy birthday!

Ms. Wang, an international student from China, has newly joined our lab as an M1 student! Also, Mr. Kobayashi, a D2 student from Iwakura Laboratory, Shibaura Institute of Technology, with whom we have been collaborating, will be working in our laboratory for the next six months. We look forward to working with him!

(M1 students) Mr. Kawai, Mr. Ogawa, Mr. Muro and Mr. Shiroma participated in the Behaviour Modelling Summer School (@Univ. of Tokyo). We constructed an activity-based model that represents an individual’s all-day behavior. It was a Nested Logit model consisting of activity pattern selection, activity time selection (morning, noon, and evening), destination selection, and transportation mode selection. The team received high marks for building a large-scale model system with a total of 10 nests, and was ranked fourth overall (out of 17 teams). We would like to thank the Hato Laboratory of the University of Tokyo for serving as the organizer of the competition.

We also received the Kozumi Prize, which is awarded to the team with the best mathematical modeling. The prize was a bottle of locally brewed sake from Kozumi, Tottori Prefecture. Below is a photo of us with a team from Kobe University, which won the same prize.

We had a launch party in our laboratory after the summer seminar was over!

We also gave Mr. Imaoka (M2), who celebrated his birthday last week, a gift of ‘aojiru’ (green juice)!

[2018/08/25～08/28]

TSU’s annual summer seminar, jointly organized by five TSU laboratories, was held at Sarugakyo Onsen in Minakami Town, Gunma Prefecture. This year, we had research presentations mainly by M2 students, lectures by professors, and interactive discussions. From our laboratory, (M2 students) Mr. Hirabayashi, Ms. Kaneko, Mr. Imaoka, Mr. Suzuki, and (M1 student) Ms. Salsabia presented their research. It was a valuable opportunity for us to listen to and discuss presentations by professors and students from other laboratories, and we believe that it provided a good stimulus for our future research activities.

Also this year, Mr. Tanaka, a M2 student of University of the Ryukyus, is staying in Fukuda Laboratory and gave a presentation in the summer seminar.

Furthermore, we had a table tennis match and BBQ as a recreational activity, which was a very meaningful camp.

As the first semester was over and the Bon Festival was just around the corner, we held a party to celebrate Mr. Azarel’s (M2) graduation from the Master’s Program and a farewell party for Ms. Iokura (M1) before her study abroad at the campus. Mr. Ishii, an alumnus of our lab, also came to the party!

Mr. Azarel will continue his doctoral course in our laboratory, and Ms. Iokura will study abroad at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan) for 10 months from the middle of August. We will miss you, but good luck with your research there!

[2018/07/21]

We held a reunion mainly for students who belonged to our laboratory from 2009 to 2014. Many alumni/alumnae attended the party and had a nostalgic time. It was a pleasure to hear their successes and experiences. We are looking forward to hearing more happy experiences when we hold the next meeting!

(Kaneko)

[2018/07/20]

We participated in the symposium, “Attractiveness of Railroads and Railroad Routes in the Tokyo Area – Challenges and Future Prospects”, held by the Transportation Research Institute (TRI).

The symposium included a lecture on the issue of declined population in the Tokyo area, introductions of initiatives by six railroad companies in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and a panel discussion with experts on these initiatives. The population of the Tokyo metropolitan area is expected to continue to increase at least until 2045, and the forecast has been updated to show that the problem of population decline is not expected to arrive anytime soon. I felt that the railroad companies should focus on something else (strengthening connections with other mobility?) rather than developing new businesses to prepare for the decline in population. A rescue center in the city in the event of a disaster, etc.).

I also thought it would be interesting to see what Mr. Hiroshi Naito (architect and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo) would like to do with the “What do railroad operators want to do? I was impressed by Mr. Shuyo Ishikawa’s comment, “Stations are places that convey core contents, so I would like them to think more about how to build stations, without taking advantage of their potential. (Hirabayashi)