Akinori Nishihara received his B.E. (1973), M.E. (1975), and D.Eng. (1978) degrees in electronics from Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since 1978, he has taught at Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he is now a Specially Appointed Professor and oversees the 6-University Human Assets Promotion Program for Innovative Education and Research (HAPPIER). He is an IEEE Life Fellow and an IEICE Fellow, and served as IEICE Director for Conferences, Student Activities, and Education (2007-2009), and IEICE Director, General Affairs (2011-2013). He has recently been named IEEE Region 10 Director-Elect for 2017-2018.Professor Nishihara has pursued and optimized various advanced educational strategies based on face-to-face, distance, and online environments for on-campus learning, international education, and industry-academia cooperation. His practices extend to several teaching approaches, such as flipped-classroom using online materials as well as pure online e-learning.
Over the course of an active career, Professor Nishihara has developed three major aspects of educational practice:
(1) He promoted industry-academia cooperation via the Association of DSPS [Digital Signal Processing Systems] Educators, established in 1999, whose 15 annual conferences were organized under his leadership up until 2013.
(2) He advanced International Distance Educational systems for higher education through courses on signal processing conducted as an International Graduate Program at Tokyo Tech. Courses delivered to both Thailand and the Philippines made the most of distance learning systems based on satellite communication and the Internet, thus optimizing ICT potential across various fields.
(3) He has strongly advocated academic global exchange through his support and supervision of various student associations for the purpose. He also continues to encourage and promote educational accreditation throughout the Asian region.
Therefore, for his outstanding contribution to educational practices for signal processing education, Professor Emeritus and Specially Appointed Professor Akinori Nishihara of Tokyo Institute of Technology fully merits conferral of the Excellent Educational Practices Award.
