| Kingo Kobayashi |
Dr. Kingo Kobayashi completed his master’s degree at the University of Tokyo in 1970, and thereupon became an research associate in the Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering Science, Osaka University. He became associate professor, Department of Informatics, the University of Electro-Communications in 1989, and was promoted to professor in 1993. In 1999, when the university was reorganized, he became the first chair of the Department of Informatics and Communication Engineering. He was a visiting researcher, Cornell University from 1988 to 1989, and a visiting professor, Bielefeld University in Germany from 1993 to 1995. From 2009, when he retired from the University of Electro-Communications, until September 2012, he was active in providing advice and conducting research at the Network Security Research Institute, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in the capacity as a senior researcher and R&D advisor to the National Institute. Thus, over a period of 40 years, he has devoted himself to research and education, primarily in the information and communications field.
His research achievements include outstanding breakthroughs in Shannon theory, multi-user information theory, and memory channels, and in coding of combination theory-based structures in computer science. In particular, he has established both engineering and theoretical foundations for information and communication in Japan by his decades-long study on information theory, which has provided the IEICE with an important theoretical framework. He took the initiative in Japan in starting research into multi-user information theory in the late 1970s, produced world-class results, and was the motive force in advancing Japan’s information theory research, which was then lagging behind the rest of the world. In particular, the achievable rate region identified in his 1981 paper (coauthored with Te Sun Han) is known as the Han-Kobayashi Region. It addressed the interference channel capacity determination problem, which had been hitherto unsolved and stood in the way of establishing a theoretical foundation for wireless communication systems. Thirty years later, no coding methods have been found that can exceed this region. Currently, leading-edge communication engineers and researchers in the U.S. and Europe are making a concerted effort to apply the ideas elucidated in his paper to wireless communications in the real world. The number of citations of this paper exceeds 1,000 and continues to increase, making it one of the most important papers in both theoretical research and the practical applications of interference channels. Dr. Kobayashi is also known for proposing the problem of identifying a hidden Markov information source and finding a way to solve this problem, and for determining the channel capacity of a permuting relay channel, thereby providing new insight into the difficult aspect of finite state channels.In the sphere of education, he taught many classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Electro-Communications, and authored many books targeting a wide range of readers from beginners to researchers. In particular, his book, “Mathematics of Information and Coding” (coauthored with Te Sun Han, and originally published in Japanese by Iwanami Shoten with a revised version published by Baifukan), was translated into English and published by the American Mathematical Society to wide critical acclaim.
In the sphere of activities in engineering societies, he has been involved in the planning and organization of many domestic and international symposia related to information theory. He has assumed a number of important offices, such as president of the Engineering Sciences Society, chair of the Technical Committee in Information Theory, both within the IEICE, and president of the Society of Information Theory and its Applications. He has also been committed to international activities, serving as associate editor of IEEE IT Transactions. Especially noteworthy is the initiative he took as president of the Engineering Sciences Society of the IEICE to merge the Society of Information Theory and its Applications with the IEICE and make it a sub-society of the Engineering Sciences Society in order to integrate domestic information theory research organizations and thereby strengthen the global presence of Japan’s information theory community.
As stated above, Dr. Kobayashi has received high global acclaim in the field of theoretical research into information and communications, and has numerous distinguished achievements to his name gathered over many years. For these reasons, we recommend that Dr. Kobayashi be granted the status of fellow, honorary member.
