| Takehiro Moriya |
Dr. Takehiro Moriya received his M.S. in applied mathematics and instrumentation physics from the University of Tokyo in 1978. In the same year, he joined Musashino Electrical Communication Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (currently Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation). He received his Ph.D. from the same university in 1989. From January to November, 1989, he stayed at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a guest researcher. He became a Distinguished Technical Member at NTT Human Interface Laboratories in December 1997, and Executive Manager of the Human and Information Research Laboratory in January 2004. Since 2007, he has been Head of Moriya Research Laboratory, and Fellow of NTT Laboratories.Dr. Moriya has long been involved in research on speech and audio coding. His research has always been at the forefront of worldwide research. In the area of digital cell phone and automobile phone technology, he made a technical contribution by leading the team that developed PSI-CELP speech coding based on a pitch synchronous innovation scheme, which was adopted as a PDC half-rate standard in 1993. In developing ITU-T Rec. G.729 (8k-bit/s CS-ACELP), which is speech coding essential to IP phone communication devices even today, he proposed the concept of a conjugate vector quantization structure and pitch synchronous innovation. His proposal made it possible to define a standard for high-quality and low-bit-rate coding. His concept of pitch synchronous innovation later led to the international standardization of a low-bit-rate speech coding for various mobile phones.
In the area of audio coding, he contributed to the development of the idea of transform domain weighted interleave vector quantization (TwinVQ), and realized fixed-bit allocation coding at below 64k-bit/s, which is error-resistant and exhibits audio quality superior to that of MP3. This technology can be regarded as the enabler of music delivery over a network, such as ISDN, and mobile music players, and has been adopted as one of the audio coding technologies for MPEG-4.
He also worked on a lossless coding scheme that prevents loss of information during compression, and made technical contributions to the definition of MPEG-4 audio loss-less coding (MPEG-4 ALS). Similarly, in the definition of Rec. G.711.0, which is a lossless coding version of G.711 (PCM coding), in ITU-T, he contributed to cutting the transmission data volume in half without loss of quality.
Dr. Moriya actively served in the standardization arena, such as ITU-T and MPEG, to promote commercial use of these technologies. In particular, as Chair of the SC29 Technical Committee of Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan, he worked to incorporate technologies used in Japan into international standards. He also served as an editor for MPEG-4. He contributed to the development of electronics, information and communications technologies in Japan and was instrumental in increasing the presence of these technologies in the international arena by serving as the Associate Editor of Transactions in the IEICE, as Vice Chair or a steering committee member of international conferences, and as Vice President of the Acoustical Society of Japan.
In recognition of these achievements, Dr. Moriya has been the recipient of numerous awards. Major awards include Technical Development Awards from the Acoustical Society of Japan in 1994 and 1996, the Best Paper Award from IEICE in 1995, the Kobayashi Memorial Achievement Award from IEICE in 1995, the Achievement Award from IEICE in 2007, the Minister of Post and Telecommunication Award from RCR in 1996, Telecommunication System Engineering Awards from the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation in 1996, 1999 and 2007, the Best Technology Award (Information System) from Nikkei-BP in 1997, the Distinguished Invention Award from the Science and Technology Agency in 1998, the Excellent Patent Award from the Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation in 2003, the Best Paper Award from the Information Processing Society of Japan in 2006, the Japan Audio Society Award, the Maejima Award and the Prizes for Science and Technology from the Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2008, and Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2010. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
As is evident from the above, Dr. Moriya has made a distinguished contribution to the field of electronics, information and communications, and I am fully convinced that he is well qualified to receive the Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award from the IEICE.
