| Miwako Doi |
Dr. Miwako Doi graduated from the Department of Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 1977, and completed her master’s degree in electronics, Graduate School of Engineering of the same university in 1979. Immediately thereafter, she joined Tokyo Shibaura Electric Company (currently Toshiba Corporation). She received her PhD from the University of Tokyo in 2002. Since 2008, she has been Chief Fellow, Corporate Research and Development Center, Toshiba. In 2012, she was Guest Professor in Information Science, Graduate School, Osaka University. Her achievements as a researcher in the commercial sector are noteworthy. As a female researcher, she has been a true pioneer in the fields of electronics, information and communication.Aware that an era was dawning when it would be taken for granted that large numbers of ordinary people would be using computers, Dr. Doi drove research and development of human interface (HI) technology, and developed an HI technology that makes it easy to create, translate, or otherwise handle documents and presentation materials using a computer without any need for programming.
The main technologies she has developed include figure/table anchoring technology, which determines the layout of a document in a way that is suitable for the text in it, document structure extraction technology, which extracts the document structure, identifying chapters and sections, based on headings, and machine translation editing technology, which facilitates comparison between the original text and the translation. The figure/table anchoring technology drives an anchor in each paragraph that refers to figures or tables so that, when the paragraph’s position in the document is changed, the figures and tables referred to by the paragraph will automatically move to the new position. The document structure extraction technology analyzes a given document, and automatically adjusts chapter number formats and bullet point symbols. This technology has been incorporated into the widely used auto-format function. The machine translation editing technology arranges the original sentence and the translated sentence side by side so that the translation can be checked and edited easily.
These pioneering technologies are not confined to Toshiba’s products but are also found in products outside Japan, such as Microsoft Office, other documentation software compatible with it, and Webpage production software. By developing useful services, such as ekitan.com, which is the first pedestrian navigation service available on a mobile phone, and by obtaining 165 patents in Japan and 170 overseas, she has also made significant contributions to promoting HI technology.
In the IEICE, she served as a member of its Strategic Planning Committee for many years. As the leader of the Working Group on the Shift to Chargeable Electronic Journals within the committee, she promoted an initiative for paid electronic journals, which was implemented in 2005. In addition, as director of Conferences, Student Activities and Education (fiscal 2005 and 2006), director of General Affairs (fiscal 2013 and 2014), and vice-chair of the Technical Committee on Cloud Network Robots, she has devoted herself to revitalizing the activities of the IEICE. She has taken a variety of important positions in councils that promote science and technology, such as vice president of the Information Processing Society of Japan in 2007, and vice president of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan in 2012. She was also a member of the Information and Communications Council, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, and of the 20th, 22nd and 23rd Science Council of Japan, and secretary of Section III of the same Council.
The figure/table anchoring technology that she developed was the first software technology for which the National Invention Award was conferred, and paved the way for the development of the documentation assistance market for consumers. For her contributions to progress in information processing through her development of HI technology for documentation, she has received a total of 19 awards and commendations. They include the Information and Communications Month Award from Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Science and Technology Award from Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the Achievement Award from both the IEICE and the Information Processing Society, and she has been made a fellow of the IEICE, the Information Processing Society of Japan, and IEEE.
As stated above, her research achievements in human interface design, and contributions to the development of both the IEICE and the electronics, information and communication fields are outstanding. We are convinced that she is an amply qualified recipient for the Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award.
