Dr. Kenichi Mase completed his master’s course in electrical engineering in the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Waseda University in 1972. The same year, he joined Musashino Electrical Communication Laboratory, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (currently Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT)). He became director of the Communication Quality Laboratory, Telecommunication Network Laboratories in 1994, and director of the Information Communication Assessment Laboratory, Multimedia Network Laboratories in 1996. He received his PhD from Waseda University in 1983. In 1999, he became a professor in the Department of Information Engineering, the Faculty of Engineering, Niigata University, and a professor of the Graduate School of Science and Technology of the same university in 2004. Since 2013, he has been a professor emeritus and a fellow in the Institute of Science and Technology at Niigata University.After joining NTT, he began research on improving communication traffic control. He demonstrated his leadership in this area by inventing a dynamic routing method, which combined a central control method that calculates alternate routes using a traffic database and a distributed control method that optimizes routing at each switch in real time. Patents for this technology were obtained in Japan, Europe and Canada. This technology was incorporated into NTT’s long-distance network from 1993. He thus contributed to enhancing the economy and reliability of communication networks. He also led the development of a network design system aimed at simplifying network design. The results of this development were mainly applied in Asian countries. In this way, he contributed to the enhancement and systematization of network design technologies.
After he moved to Niigata University, he drove innovative research and development in the fields of ad hoc and wireless mesh networks. Specifically, he led the development of an outdoor testbed consisting of more than 90 nodes and a routing simulator, making it one of the largest testbeds of its kind anywhere in the world. He was thus instrumental in building an experimental environment, promoting joint research with both domestic and international organizations and formulating international standards in this field. In addition, he opened up a new technical field: a wide-area ad hoc network that utilizes airships, electric vehicles and unmanned aircraft. He took the lead in its empirical research and development. He demonstrated the new technology’s usability in restoring services in the wake of a large-scale disaster through his practical activities - building wireless mesh networks in the areas hit by the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake and later those hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake and providing temporary telecommunication services using these networks. As indicated above, Dr. Mase has led initiatives to bring new technical areas into being in the field of information communication networks and has published numerous papers in transactions of both the IEICE and the IEEE.
For these achievements, he received the Best Paper Award (1994), the Achievement Award (2014) and the Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award (2016) from the IEICE and was raised to the status of fellow by the IEICE (2001) and the IEEE (2005). He has contributed to the development of the IEICE by serving as chair of the Technical Committee on Communication Quality (fiscal 1998-1999), director of finance (fiscal 2004-2005), chair of the Technical Committee on Ad Hoc Networks (fiscal 2007), president of the Communications Society (fiscal 2008), director of the Shinetsu Section (fiscal 2010), and as vice president (fiscal 2011-2012). He also worked tirelessly on the establishment (2003) of a consortium for the ad hoc network platform that required the collaboration of players from industry, government and academia, and served as the chair of its operating committee for an extended period, thereby contributing to creating research projects, driving joint research and promoting industrial applications in this field.
As stated above, Dr. Mase’s contributions to the IEICE and the electronics, information and communication fields cannot be overstated, and we recommend that he be granted the status of as a fellow, honorary member of the IEICE.
