Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award

Yuichi MATSUSHIMA
Yuichi MATSUSHIMA

Dr. Yuichi Matsushima completed the Doctoral course in Electrical Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University in 1978 and was awarded a doctorate in engineering. In the same year, he joined Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. Ltd. (KDD). Since then, he has been doing research and development of semiconductor optical devices mainly for optical communication at KDD Research Lab, and he was appointed Executive of KDD R & D Laboratories, Inc. in 1998 and Deputy Director of KDDI R & D Laboratories, Inc. in 2001. In 2003, he moved to the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), where he became Director of the Information and Communications Division, and in 2006 he was appointed Director of the reorganized National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). From 2010 to 2019, he served as a Professor at the Research Strategy Center and Director of the Green Computing Systems Research Organization at Waseda University. He continues to serve as an advisor to Waseda University's Project Research Institutes, providing guidance to future generations.

He has made a great contribution to the development in the field of optical communication systems over many years through his pioneering research and development of semiconductor optical devices and the challenge of next-generation optical communication technology. At KDD Research Lab, he promoted the research and development of new photo detectors, semiconductor lasers and optical modulators based on compound semiconductors. He overcame many obstacles to practical use, such as high reliability, and realized for the first time in the world the introduction of the transoceanic optical submarine cable system. These optical device technologies are widely used in not only 1.55 μm single wavelength systems, but also terabit-class ultra-large capacity systems using wavelength division multiplexing. In particular, they were used as an indispensable device for submarine repeaters and terminal equipment for international large-capacity optical submarine cable systems and made a significant contribution to the construction of the expanding international communication infrastructure.

After transferring to NICT, as a leader in information and communication technology in general, he has led a wide range of fields such as optical networks, human interfaces, and information security and has been making great efforts to improve the presence of information and communication technology in Japan. In particular, in the field of optical communication, he pointed out the importance of "pioneering research on optical routers" and "Space Division Multiplexing (SDM)" represented by multi-core fibers and actively challenged to realize it. Regarding this SDM method, he presided over a study group that brought together a wide range of industry-government-academia members, launched a national project, and made efforts to accelerate this field. This trend was eventually taken over by the IEICE's "Technical Committee on Extremely Advanced Optical Transmission Technologies (EXAT)," and he has been leading the field of research and development, where Japan is currently at the top of the world, including hosting many international conferences.

He chaired several research committees in academic activities, such as the Technical Committee on Microwave Photonics (MWP) and the Technical Committee on EXAT at the IEICE. In addition to contributing to the development of new research fields, he was appointed Vice President of the IEICE in 2019 and has contributed significantly to its management and activation. Furthermore, he has held important positions such as Director of the IEEE Tokyo branch/secretary and has contributed to the activities of international academic societies.

For the above achievements, he received the Director-General of the Science and Technology Agency Award, the IEE Electronics Letter Premium Award, the IEICE Achievement Award, the Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial Prize, and the IPRM Award for his achievements. In addition, he has been awarded the Fellow by IEICE, IEEE, and the Japan Society of Applied Physics.

As mentioned above, his achievements in academic research and acceleration in a wide range of electronics, information, and communication in industry-government-academia and his long-standing contribution to the operation of IEICE have been truly outstanding. We are confident that he deserves the Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award from IEICE.