Dr. Nobuyoshi Kikuma graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at Nagoya Institute of Technology in 1982, and from the Graduate School of Engineering at Kyoto University in March 1987, and was appointed as an assistant in the Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University in the same year. He became an assistant in the Faculty of Engineering at the Nagoya Institute of Technology in April 1988, an assistant professor in October 1992, and a professor in April 2001, and was appointed a professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the same institute in April 2003, following a shift in the focus on graduate schools, where he remains to the present.

For many years, he promoted research in wireless communication engineering, especially in the fields of adaptive array antennas and high-speed communication technology using spatial multiplexing, and achieved outstanding achievements, as shown below.

As one of his achievements, he was one of the first to focus on the potential of adaptive arrays, which can control the directivity of array antennas by adaptively combining the signals received by multiple antenna elements, and he has devised many algorithms for application in mobile communications. The constrained minimization of power method, which enables blind processing, and control methods based on the minimum mean square error are the key technologies of antenna control in base stations and terminals in mobile communications.

He has also been working on technologies for estimating the direction of arrival and the location of radio sources using array antennas, and has further developed and super-resolution methods such as the MUSIC and ESPRIT to apply to mobile propagation environments (multipath environments), which have been applied in mobile communications and radar systems.

In recent years, MIMO transmission technology, which spatially multiplexes communications by using array antennas for both transmission and reception, has attracted much attention. He further improved the block diagonalization method, which is the basis of the control algorithm, and developed it into an efficient transmission method in multi-user MIMO, where MIMO communications are performed with multiple terminal stations.

He has held several important positions in the IEICE, including Committee Member/Secretary/Vice Chair of the Technical Committee on Antennas and Propagation, Editor-in-Chief of IEICE Transactions on B (Japanese Edition), Editor-in-Chief of IEICE ComEX, President/Vice President of the Communications Society, Tokai Section Chair, and Director of General Affairs, and contributed to developing the activities of the IEICE. During his tenure as Vice President of the Communications Society, he served as Chair of the Technical Committee Steering Committee, and promoted significant reforms in conference management, including the complete computerization of technical research reports, introducing a participation fee system to support a sound financial base for Technical Committee activities, and establishing an annual registration system. These pioneering efforts have been extended not only to the Communications Society but also to the IEICE as a whole. They are noteworthy achievements that contribute to the foundation of current IEICE Technical Committee activities. In 2018, he contributed to the launch of MIKA, a cross-disciplinary conference on innovative wireless communication technologies, the Conference Type 3 of the Communications Society. Furthermore, during his tenure as President of the Communications Society, he participated in the launch of ICETC, a new flagship international conference for cross-disciplinary discussions. He led this to a successful outcome, significantly contributing to the revitalization, cross-discipline activities, and internationalization of IEICE's activities.

He has also contributed to the development of young researchers in the field by teaching workshops and publishing textbooks on the basics of adaptive array and direction-of-arrival estimation. In addition, he has made a significant contribution to encouraging many young researchers by helping to establish the IEICE conference program "How to Write a Paper," which continues to this day, and by serving as a lecturer himself.

For these achievements, he has received numerous academic awards, including the title of Fellow of the IEICE, IEICE's Best Paper Award and Educational Service Award, and the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation Award.

As mentioned above, his achievements in the electronics and telecommunications field are genuinely remarkable, and we are confident that he is a worthy recipient of the Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award from the IEICE.