FUMIHITO ARAI, Japan

Fumihito Arai (M’91) received Master of Eng. degree from Tokyo Univ. of Science in 1988. He received Dr. of Eng. from Nagoya University in 1993. Since 1994, he was Assistant Professor of Nagoya University. Since 2005, he was Professor of Tohoku University. Since 2010, he was Professor of Nagoya University. Since 2020, he has been Professor of The University of Tokyo. He was the Vice-President for Technical Activities, IEEE Nanotechnology Council (2002, 2003), AdCom Member of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) (2009-2011, 2012-2014, and 2019-2021), the Vice President for Technical Activities, IEEE RAS (2014-2015, 2016-2017). His research fields are Micro-nano Robotics and Bio-Robotics. He received 97 awards, for example, Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation from IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in 2000, Best Conference Paper Award at ICRA2012. He is the author of 419 academic papers. He is Editor in Chief of Advanced Robotics (2012-2017).

IEEE ACTIVITIES:

COMMITTEES/BOARDS:

Co-chair, IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Micro/Nano Robotics, 2001-2021

SOCIETY:

• AdCom Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2009-2011
• AdCom Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2012-2014
• AdCom Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2019-2021
• Vice-President for Technical Activities, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2014-2015
• Vice-President for Technical Activities, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2016-2017
• Vice-President for Technical Activities, IEEE Nanotechnology Council, 2002-2003

CONFERENCES:

• General Chair, IEEE/Nagoya University WWW 1993
• General Chair, IEEE-NANO 2005
• General Co-Chair, IEEE/SICE SII 2009
• General Co-Chair, International Symposium on Multi-scale Intelligent Systems (MIS2012)
• General Co-Chair, MHS, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
• General Chair, MARSS2018
• Program Co-Chair, MHS, 1995-2012
• Program Vice-Chair, IEEE-NANO 2004
• Program Co-Chair, IEEE-NANO 2009
• Program Chair, IEEE-NANO 2016
• Program Chair, IROS 2019
• Editor, Conference Paper Review Board of IROS2014, 2015
• Editor, ICRA Conference Editorial Board, 2016, 2017
• General Affair Chair, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks,1993
• General Affair Chair, ICRA1995
• Award Chair, IEEE-NANO 2007
• Treasurer of IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation,1996
• Tutorials and Workshops Co-Chair, IROS2013
• Invited Session Chair, ICRA2014
• Program Committee member of International Conference such as ICRA, IROS, IECON, MEMS, IEEE-NANO, etc. for many times

OTHER:

Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2008-2012

QUALIFICATIONS:

Fumihito Arai served for more than 25 years in IEEE. He has extensive experience with IEEE RAS activities as a committee member(Excom, Adcom) and conference organizer, therefore, he understands IEEE, RAS organization, governance, operations, etc. He understands the history and vision of IEEE and he has sufficient knowledge and strong motivation in contributing to the society. He served as AdCom member of RAS(2009-2011, 2012-2014, and 2019-2021). He served as VP for Technical Activities of RAS(2014-2015 and 2016-2017). He contributed several IEEE conferences such as ICRA, IROS, MHS, MARSS, MEMS and so on. Recently, he contributed to IROS2019 as Program chair. He knows how to organize conference and how to activate RAS activities. Based on his extensive experience with RAS, he can support to guide the society for the benefit of members. He is motivated in making RAS more beneficial for members, activating RAS activities and supporting members, especially young researchers and involving emerging fields, and wishes to support RAS to keep growing with financial transparency. He is one of the ideal candidates for this position.

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

1. Contributions to RAS as AdCom member, 2009-2011, 2012-2014, and 2019-2021. Contribution to several committees, such as TAB, MAB, PAB, CAB, SCTP, Award, Nomination, etc.

2. RAS Award committee 2011, RAS Early Career Award nomination committee 2013, 2017, and so on. Provided fair and unbiased evaluation of candidates.

3. Co-chair of Technical Committee on Micro/Nano Robotics and Automation Pioneering works, promotion, and initiation of Micro/Nano Robotics which result in the current vibrant research on Micro/Nano Robotics and Automation at RAS sponsored conferences. Organization of Workshops. Education, encouraging young people.

4. Vice-President for Technical Activities, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2014-2015 and 2016-2017. Contribution to chair TAB, and many other volunteer works, such as establishment of new TC, Triennial review, CEMRA program to create educational programs, RAS webpage contents, etc. A lot of new TCs were launched in RAS when he served as VP TAB.

5. Vice-President for Technical Activities, IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC), 2002-2003. He was the first VP for Technical Activities of NTC. Started new TCs, which results in great success of TC activities in NTC and great contribution to IEEE-NANO for about 15 years from the beginning.

Position Statement: The field of Robotics and Automation is growing rapidly, and IEEE RAS becomes very large society in IEEE. I observed growth of RAS for the last 25 years. For the last 10 years, I have experienced RAS organization as Adcom member and Excom member, and I learned governance and operations. RAS is well organized in terms of growth of membership, pioneering emerging fields, encouraging young people, geographical balance of organization, establishment and stable organization of RA-L, etc. It seems successful for us, but I feel we are facing a lot of issues in front of us. For example, size of the major conferences is becoming large and will become much larger than we expected, registration fee of some conferences becomes expensive compared with those more than 10 years ago, number of participants from industry is not increased as we expected, efforts on conference organization under transitioning to a new normal in the post-covid era, and so on. For the continuous success of RAS, I would like to consider the benefit of RAS members first. Now is the transition period of RAS, so it is very important how we organize our society. To realize healthy growth of our society and make our society comfortable and beneficial for all members in the post-covid era, I would like to make efforts to contribute RAS as listed below.

1. Keep financial transparency of society and make the registration fee of future conferences and symposiums reasonable for members
2. Make conferences and symposiums attractive and meaningful although the size of them becomes large enough
3. Improve status of Robotics and Automation researchers by improving the quality of RAS sponsored journals as well as strengthening the linkage of journals such as RA-L with conferences. Then, reconsider the review system of conference papers to reduce the burden of authors who are driven to spend too much efforts for the non-journal papers.
4. Develop linkage of industry people and academic people using Technical Committees and conferences for balanced growth of our society and accelerating implementation of robot technologies for the wellness of human and society
5. Develop linkage of young people from all over the world with Technical Committees and increase RAS members for sustainable growth of our society
6. Keep encouraging emerging fields for future success of our society and members
7. Keep enriching RAS webpage, events, SNS, etc. for increasing visibility of IEEE RAS to public and members
8. Expand partnership with many organizations and societies for global linkage and keep the world leadership of RAS in the field of Robotics and Automation
9. Evolve conference organization system under transitioning to a new normal in the post-covid era.  Share good practices and integrate for the benefit of RAS members.