Hisashi Kobayashi's Blog
Sherman Fairchild University Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Princeton University

Biography

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Detailed Biography of Hisashi Kobayashi 1

Hisashi Kobayashi

Hisashi Kobayashi is the Sherman Fairchild University Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

He is first and foremost an engineering analyst. For example, by using the tools of mathematics and communication theory he determines the best ways to utilize transmission and computing capacity, and minimize errors and delays [19-1].2

His fields of research encompass a broad range of subjects where he can apply his knowledge in probability theory and random processes. During his 60-year professional career, he has worked on numerous fields including: (1) radar signals, (2) detection and estimation theory, (3) seismic signal processing, (4) PRML for digital recording, (5) data transmission theory, (6) image compression algorithms, (7) analytic modeling of computer performance, (8) communication networks performance, (9) loss network theory, (10) all-optical networks, (11) iterative decoding in generalized concatenated systems, (12) wireless communications, (13) wireless geolocation algorithms, (14) Internet web caching, (15) wireless traffic and mobility modeling, (16) hidden semi-Markov models, (17) Ultra wideband (UWB) communications, (18) network security protocols, (19) University reform and R & D management, (20) the Riemann hypothesis, and (21) stochastic modeling of an infectious disease.

As for his contributions to society, he has been a strong proponent of scholarship programs: he initiated the scholarship program for U.S. and Japanese students in 2011 at the Friends of UTokyo, Inc. (FUTI), New York. He and his wife have personally endowed a Graduate Fellowship Fund at Princeton University, and initiated the Shoshichi Kobayashi Memorial Scholarship Fund at the University of California at Berkeley, where his late brother Shoshichi taught mathematics for 50 years. Kobayashi has begun endowing a scholarship fund at the University of Tokyo through its New York office, fulfilling his long-held desire to pay back for what he received from the late Mr. Kintaro Sugiyama when he studied at the University of Tokyo.

Early life in Japan

Hisashi was born in Tokyo in 1938. Influenced by his elder brother Shoshichi, who was a strong believer in head start, Hisashi studied mathematics and English since his childhood. Graduating from Toyama High School in Tokyo in1957, he matriculated in the Science and Engineering Division of the University of Tokyo, where he was a recipient of the Sugiyama Scholarship in 1958-61, and the RCA David Sarnoff Scholarship in 1960, the first year that it was offered in Japanese universities [19-1]. His MS thesis “Ambiguity characteristics of a coded pulse radar,” was supervised by the late Professors Yasuo Taki and Hiroshi Miyakawa [1-1] – [1-7].

From 1963 to 1965 he worked for Toshiba Electric Co., Kawasaki, Japan, where he was engaged in a feasibility study of an over-horizon-radar [I-8]. Encouraged by his brother Shoshichi, who was then an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, he soon decided to come to the United States for doctoral study.

Life and career in the United States

Ph.D. Study at Princeton (Sept.1965-August 1967):

He came to Princeton university in 1965 as the recipient of the Orson Desaix Munn Fellowship, and received his Ph.D. degree two years later in August 1967, setting a record low time for completion of studies for the degree in Princeton’s Electrical Engineering Department’s history. His dissertation, “Representation of Complex-Valued Vector Processes and Their Application to Estimation and Detection,” was supervised by the late Professor John B. Thomas [19-1], [2-1] – [2-5].

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Applied Research Department (September 1967-December 1970)

In September 1967, he joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. as a research staff member of its Applied Research Department, where his first two years were spent on the LASA (large aperture seismic array) Project [3-1], [3-3], and data transmission theory. In the data transmission area, he derived an optimal structure for a receiver, particularly with regard to channel equalization and extraction of carrier phase and timing clock information from the data signal itself. His June 1971 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Communications, “A Simultaneous Adaptive Estimation and Decision Algorithm for Carrier Modulated Data Transmission System,” influenced the designs of many commercially produced modems and stimulated much further work by others [19-1].

Besides these assignments, he also became interested in his colleague D.T. Tang’s research on run-length limited codes, designed for high-density magnetic recording. The magnetic recording community at that time was dominated by physicists and mechanical engineers. They held the opinion that communication theory, which generally assumes linear models, would not be of much help in the design and analysis of digital recording system, which is intrinsically nonlinear because of the saturation recording and the hysteresis characteristics of magnetization.

  • Invention of PRML (1969-70):

Kobayashi was the first researcher in the IBM Research with formal training in statistical communication theory who examined closely digital recording theory. He realized that the playback (i.e., readout) process can be treated as a linear system and that the nonlinear and hysteresis parts take place only in the recording (i.e., write-in) process. In the absence of the “pulse crowding effect,” which was the magnetic recording community’s jargon for inter-symbol interference (ISI), Kobayashi found that the read-out signal sampled at its peak can be modeled as output from a linear system with transfer function G(D)=1-D, where D is the delay operator. This is in contrast to the “duobinary” signaling G(D)=1+D, conceived for high-speed data transmission by Adam Lender in 1963. If the bit interval is halved (i.e., the recording density is doubled), then the transfer function G(D)=1-D2 can be realized. This finding led to his patents with D.T. Tang [P-1], [P-3], and their seminal paper, “Application of Partial-Response Channel Coding to Magnetic Recording System,” IBM Journal of Research and Development, July 1970 [4-2].

In the spring of 1969, he was invited to teach graduate courses on “signal detection theory” and “information theory” at UCLA and was granted from IBM a sabbatical leave, in less than two years after he joined the company. At UCLA, he had an opportunity to learn about A.J. Viterbi’s work published in 1967 on optimal decoding of convolutional codes, which is now widely known as the Viterbi algorithm. Kobayashi immediately realized that convolutional codes and correlative-level codes (or partial-response signals) are mathematically similar, the former being defined over the Galois field (GF2), where the latter, over the real number field. Thus, he was convinced that a maximum-likelihood decoding technique, which the Viterbi algorithm was for convolutional codes, should be applied to partial-response signals. His analysis led to the papers “Application of Probabilistic Decoding to Digital Magnetic Recording Data,” IBM Journal of Research and Development, January 1971 [4-4], and “Correlative Level Coding and Maximum Likelihood Decoding,” IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, September 1971 [4-8].

These, together with the above paper [4-2], laid down the foundation of PRML (partial-response, maximum likelihood). Kobayashi’s paper [4-8] and G.D. Forney’s 1972 paper were the runner- ups of the best paper award for papers published in the IEEE Trans. on Information Theory in 1971-72. It was not until 1990, however, that Kobayashi’s invention was adopted in actual products [4-12],

  • Image compression algorithms (4/1970-12/1970):

Upon returning from UCLA, Kobayashi was assigned to develop algorithms for image data compression. He and L.R. Bahl produced a number of patents [P-4, P-6, P-7], invention disclosures [D-3, D-4], and publications [6-1, 6-2, 6-3]. The 1974 US patent 3,833,900, “Image compaction system” [P-6], which uses “differential run length coding” (also referred to as “vertical reference coding”) became the core of IBM’s proposal for a CCITT standard and was adopted in two-dimensional image coding.

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Computer Science Department (January 1971-June 1986)

Manager of System Measurement and Modeling (01/1971-12/1973)

In January 1971 he was appointed Manager of the “System Measurement and Modeling” group, newly created in the Computer Science Department at IBM Research Center. He made a jump from communications-oriented to computer-oriented research. Kobayashi’s research on queuing theory has contributed to the evolution of modern data communication networks [19-1]. His group quickly became a world leader in advancing the state-of-the-art of this new field.

Senior Manager of Systems Analysis and Algorithm (01/1974-12/1980)

In 1974, he was promoted to Senior Manager of “Systems Analysis and Algorithms,” and directed five groups: computer performance modeling, teleprocessing communication networks, satellite communications, computer network measurement and control, and storage management and analysis. He is particularly known for work on the diffusion process approximation approach to solution of queueing network models, in which discrete-valued queue lengths are replaced by continuous variables, opening the door to use the differential equations of diffusion analysis. This work was reported in the April and July issues of the Journal of ACM as a two-part article in [7-6, 7-8].

Kobayashi and M. Reiser developed computationally efficient algorithms [7-27,7-28] for analytic models that represent a multiprogram virtual storage system. He also obtained an asymptotically tight upper bound of the waiting time distribution in a G/G/1 system, using sub- martingales [7-21].

Sabbatical leave to University of Hawaii and Stanford University

(07/1975-06/1976):

Invited by the University of Hawaii to work as a consultant for its DARPA-sponsored Aloha System Project and by Stanford University to teach a graduate course on computer performance modeling, Kobayashi was granted a second sabbatical leave from IBM. His research at Hawaii in July to December 1975 was concerned about the late Prof. Norman Abramson’s slotted Aloha random access protocol, and led to his work on discrete-time queues [C-3, 8-1, 8-3] and a diffusion process approximation of the backlog process [C-7, 8-1a].

In January to June 1976, he taught graduate courses at Stanford University on “Discrete mathematics,” and “Computer performance modeling.” He discovered that the “cycle index polynomial” of a symmetric permutation group in the Polya theory of enumeration can be used to efficient computation of the “partition function”, or the normalization constant G of the product-form queueing network [7-30, 7-31]. During his stay at Stanford, he coauthored an “Invited paper: Queuing Models for Computer Communications Systems Analysis,” with A.G. Konheim (IBM) for the IEEE Trans. On Communications (January 1977) [8-3].

At IBM Research he held heavy management responsibilities, but continued maintaining his leading position as a researcher. The book Modeling and Analysis: An Introduction to System Performance Evaluation Methodology, which he started writing in 1971 finally came to fruition and was published from Addison Wesley in 1978 [B-1], as a volume in the IBM System Programing Series. The book covers simulation models and statistical analysis as well as analytic models. Nominated by Prof. Franklin Kuo of the University of Hawaii, Kobayashi was elected Fellow of the IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) in January 1977.

Sabbatical to Darmstadt, West Germany, and Free University of Brussels, Belgium (09/1979-12/1980):

Kobayashi was awarded a Senior U.S. Scientist Award (a.k.a. Humboldt Prize) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and spent 12 months at the Institute of Prof. E. Haensler of the Technical University of Darmstadt. He investigated use of complexity theory in network design and algorithm [8-5]. During his stay in Europe, he was invited to serve as the founding editor-in-chief of a new international journal Performance Evaluation of North-Holland [7-32, 8- 7]. In September to December 1980, he was appointed an “International Professor of Computer Science,” at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and gave a series of lectures, attended by graduate students of nearby universities and researchers of industrial labs in Belgium. His lecture notes were published as three book chapters [C-3, C-4, C-5]. His lecture series were attended by the then graduate student, Herwig Bruneel, who became a professor at Ghent University and nominated Kobayashi to the Honorary Doctorate Degree on March 22, 2019.

Department Manager of VLSI Design (01/1981-03/1982):

Upon return from his 16 months sabbatical in Germany and Belgium, Kobayashi was appointed Department Manager of the newly created VLSI Design Department, which consolidated all the VLSI design methodology related efforts at IBM Research. Kobayashi initiated a flagship prototype project “System 370 on a chip” as a vehicle to pull together all VLSI design efforts scattered in IBM Research.

Founding Director of IBM Japan Science Institute (JSI) (04/1982-06/1986):

He was appointed the Founding Director of a newly created basic research lab in Tokyo, Japan Science Institute (JSI), later renamed the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory. JSI was IBM’s strategic move to expand its research arms to Japan and Asia. Kobayashi’s mandate was to recruit researchers from top-rated universities and initiate research projects critical to IBM Japan. He started and directed a number of research projects, such as knowledge-base systems, medical information systems, natural language processing, Kanji input systems, Japanese speech recognition, handwritten character recognition, image and graphics processing, software engineering, VLSI design, advanced work stations and robotic systems.

The number of staff grew to more than 200 during his four-year appointment. For his success in establishing a first-rate lab in a short period, Kobayashi received, in 1984, an outstanding contribution award from the IBM Japan President.

Princeton University, School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) (July 1986 – June 2008)

In 1986 he was appointed by President William Bowen, the 17th President of Princeton University, to be Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Dean of SEAS, Princeton University (07/1986-06/1991):

“… He arrived during a period of rapid expansion at the school in terms of the kinds and amount of sponsored research undertaken within the various disciplines and, in fact, of the disciplines themselves, and in terms of the new linkage between the school and other disciplines within the University. He played a key role in establishing several interdisciplinary and/or inter-institutional centers and programs in such areas as material science, opto- electronics, earthquake engineering, surface engineered materials, discrete mathematics for computer science, and plasma etching. During the five years (1986-1991) of his tenure as dean, the number of permanent faculty members in the school grew by almost 30 percent (from 83 to 107), and the undergraduate female enrollment increased from 20 percent to 25 percent. The total sponsored research grew by as much as 60 percent, and corporate gifts increased by 150 percent.”3

In his 3rd year as the dean, he started his research with Prof. P.R. Prucnal, funded by the NJ Commission on Science & Technology4. At the ICCC’90 in New Delhi (11/1990), he presented “Performance Issues of Broadband ISDN Parts I & II” [8-8, 8-9], and his work on modeling a statistical multiplexer at the International Symposium on Information Theory held at Budapest (06/1991) [8-10].

During his term as Dean he was appointed as advisory member of numerous organization such as NASA, Washington, DC., SRI International at Menlo Park, Institute of System Science in Singapore; and British Columbia Advanced System Institute, Canada.

NEC C& C Chair, RCAST, University of Tokyo (09/1991-06/1992): Kobayashi was granted a full year sabbatical leave and spent 9 months (09/1991-05/1992) as an NEC C&C Chair Professor of RCAST (the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology) of the University of Tokyo at the invitation of the late Prof. T. Okoshi, the Center Director. His research was on “Non-stationary solutions for statistical multiplexing” in a packet- switched network [8-11, 8-12]. He also wrote an invited paper with Q.Ren, “A mathematical theory for transient analysis of communication networks.” [8-13]. During his stay in Japan, he gave invited lectures at numerous conferences universities, and industrial labs.

Short-term Visitor to Germany (06/1992-07/1992):

As a former recipient of the Humboldt Prize, Kobayashi received a short-term visitor award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Given Prof. E. Haensler’s Institute as a base, Kobayashi was on a lecturing tour on “High-speed communication networks,” and “Transient solutions of queues” within Austria/Germany/Switzerland: University of Frankfurt (06/29), Technical University of Darmstadt (07/01), Univ of Braunschweig (07/03), Univ. of Dortmund (07/07), Univ of Stuttgart (07/10), Siemens Corporate R&D, Munich (07/13), Tech. Univ. of Munich (07/15), GMD FOKUS, Berlin (07/16), Univ of Wurzburg (07/21), and Univ. of Erlangen- Nuremburg (07/23).

Professor of Electrical Engineering, SEAS, Princeton University (09/1992-06/2008):

He regularly taught a senior-level course “ELE 486: Digital Communications and Networks,” graduate courses “ELE 521 Communications Networks,” and “ELE 526: Random Processes for Information Systems.” Below is a list of research projects he carried out during the following 16 years.

  • Broadband communication networks (1991-95):

It was the period when the Internet was yet to arise and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) fast packet switching based B-ISDN (Broadband-Integrated Service Digital Network) initiated by the world-wide telecommunication carriers (ATT, NTT, and PTTs in Europe, etc.) was envisioned as multimedia network services for the future. Funded by the RCAST of U. of Tokyo, the NJ Commission on Science & Technology (co-PI: P.R. Prucnal), the Ogasawara Foundation for the Promotion of Science & Technology, and the Institute for Super-computing Research (ISR), Kobayashi worked on “Non-stationary behavior of statistical multiplexing with multiple types of traffic” [8-21] and “Application of diffusion approximation to an ATM statistical multiplexer” [8-25].

  • Optical network architecture and performance analysis (1993-97):

Continued being funded by NJCST (co-PI: P.R. Prucnal) and ARPA (co-PIs: S.R. Forrest and P.R. Prucnal), Kobayashi and his students worked on architecture and performance analysis of multi-hop shuffle network [ 10-12, 10-14, 10-21]. He was a consultant for Bell Labs for their grant from DARPA on all-optical network project, and invented (co-inventor I.P. Kaminow) “Combined wavelength routers and switch apparatus”, US Patent No. 5,623,356 (4/22/1997) [P-8], which makes use of Kobayashi’s discovery of “Dualities among space, time and wavelength” [10-11]. He, B.L. Mark and others worked on call-blocking probabilities of all-optical networks.

  • Loss network theory (1994-1997):

With an NSF grant, “An algorithmic analysis and congestion control of connection-oriented services in large scale communication networks,” Kobayashi and B.L Mark developed “virtual channel and path allocation in ATM networks” and developed generalized loss models, loss networks and their applications [9-4,9-7]. He was invited to serve as co-editor of special volumes on computational aspects of teletraffic models, and performance & control of networks [8-26, 8-27].

  • Iterative decoding in concatenated systems (1997-2000):

With NSF Grant “A study of concatenated codes and coded modulation,” he and J. Bajcsy invented an iterative decoding scheme, in which erasures (or ambiguous bits) are corrected in an iterative fashion, Their US Patent No.6,029,264, “System and method for error correcting a received data stream in a generalized concatenated system” [P-10] has been cited by more than 334 times by other patents or papers. It is highly likely that many communication and digital recording systems adopt the basic idea disclosed in this patent. The IEEE 802 standard for WiFi, for instance, appears to incorporate the iterative decoding scheme when they adopt an LDPC (low-density parity check) code in forming a concatenated system. This research also yielded many conference and journal publications [11-1, 11,4, 11-7, 11-8, 11-13, 11-14]. Under this NSF grant he and D. Wang investigated an optimal design of turbo codes and low-complexity MAP decoding [11-9, 11-11, 11- 12, 12-16].

  • Multipath Interference in an FM data subcarrier (1996-1999):

In a contracted research from Seiko Co., Kobayashi, L. Zeger, and P. Chen conducted analysis and simulation on multipath interference in an FM data subcarrier, where data is represented in CPM signal such as GMSK [12-4, 12-5, 12-8, 12-25].

  • Mobile radio TD-CDMA in 3G (1997-2000):

Kobayashi and P. Castoldi (visiting scholar from Italy) studied an optimal detector for a mobile radio TD-CDMA in 3G system [12-3, 12-21].

  • Chanel estimation and signal detection in OFDM (2001-2003):

OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) was adopted as bandwidth efficient signaling in WiFi and other systems. Kobayashi, X. Ma, and S.C. Schwartz (co-advisor) investigated EM (Expectation-Maximization) algorithm based on channel estimation in an OFDM system [12-20, 12-23, 12-27], [12-29] – [12-32].

  • Wireless geolocation algorithms (2000-2004):

Funded by Digital Angel Net, Inc, and NTT Docomo, Inc., Yihong Qi and Kobayashi developed algorithms for estimating the location of a mobile user based on TOA (time of arrival), TDOA (time- difference of arrivals), or SS (signal strength) in an NLOS (non-line-of-sight signal) environment [13-1]-[13-3]. [13-5, 13-6, 13-8, 13-11]. They and H. Suda of NTT Docomo further extended them to multipath environments [13-12, 13-15]. A paper coauthored by his student S. Gezici, et al.,“Localization via Ultra-Wideband Radios” [13-13] has received more than 2,562 citations.

  • Internet Web Caching Algorithms (2000-2006):

In order to provide efficient Web-access over the Internet, an ingenious scheme was proposed by visiting professor S-Z Yu and Kobayashi, as disclosed in a US patent [P-13] No. 7,058,691, “System for wireless push and pull based services” (issued June 6, 2006), and their paper [14-1].

  • Hidden Semi-Markov Models and Computational Algorithms (2000-2003):

S-Z Yu and Kobayashi considered an HSMM (hidden semi-Markov model) for wireless network service provisioning. They devised an efficient forward-backward algorithm to estimate explicit duration in HSMMs [16-3, 16-4].

  • Ultra Wideband (UWB) Communication Systems (2003-2006):

UWB radars have been of long-standing interest. The coded pulse radar that Kobayashi worked on at the University of Tokyo was a pulse compression radar using the UWB concept. UWB communications related systems have recently received wide interest after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed the use of unlicensed UWB communications. The first commercial systems are for short-range personal area networks (PANs), for which the IEEE 802.15.3a channel model standard was developed. S, Gezici, H.V. Poor and Kobayashi devised several technologies using UWB impulse radio, such as time-hopping impulse radio and its optimal/suboptimal receiver, analysis of the effect of timing jitter, localization (i.e., geolocation) schemes, a rake receiver for UWB [17-4] – [17-17]. The heavily cited paper [13-13] “Localization via Ultra-wideband Radios: A look at positioning aspects of future sensor networks,” by Gezici, Kobayashi, et al. focuses on geolocation applications, and the Qi-Kobayashi technologies (e.g., [13- 15]) are important components of this article.

  • Network Security Protocols (2003-2007):

Kobayashi’s group was responsible for developing secure network protocols in an NSF funded project: “Mid-Atlantic Regional Next-Generation Wireless Network Research Testbed” with Rutgers University (PI: D. Raschaudhuri). Kobayashi and I. Avramopoulos devised secure routing and data forwarding protocols [18-1, 18-6, 18-7, 18-10]. Kobayashi and Q. Huang investigated modeling of DDoS (distributed denial of services) attacks [18-2, 18-3]. and developed two types of key establishment protocols; one is “fast authenticated” and the other is “unbalanced” [18-4, 18-8].

Distinguished Researcher at NICT, Japan (September2008-March 2016):

In September 2008 Kobayashi was appointed Senior Distinguished Researcher of the National Institute of information and Communication Technology, Japan by President Hideo Miyahara. His role is to advise Dr. Miyahara on the various programs of NICT, especially the next- generation Internet project. He emphasized the importance of performance evaluation and prediction of the future Internet.

Recent Research Activities and Award (2015- present):

Kobayashi began investigating the 156 years old Riemann hypothesis (RH) problem in 2015, and posted the results in his blog page, “Towards a Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis” [20-1] – [20-9], two of which have been also published in arXiv.org [20-5, 20-6].

On March 22, 2019, he received the honorary doctorate degree from the Ghent University, Belgium. It was a totally unexpected honor for Kobayashi, who was moved by Prof. Herwig Bruneel for his kindness. When Kobayashi gave a series of lectures in September-December 1980 at University of Brussels, Herwig, a young Ph.D. candidate at Ghent University, attended it every week by commuting by train, and found Kobayashi’s lecture on discrete-time queues so intriguing that he chose it as the topic of his doctoral thesis. Kobayashi found it also flattering that the award selection committee at Ghent was favorably impressed by his current effort to challenge the RH problem.

Since 2020, Kobayashi has been concentrating on his proposal of a new stochastic model of an infectious disease [21-1] – [21- 8]. He obtained a closed form expression for the probability generating function for time-nonhomogeneous BDI process (birth-and-death process with immigration). This Markov process based model is much more powerful than the conventional SIR model and its variants, which a majority of mathematical epidemiologists seem subscribing to. He is currently investigating how his mathematical model can be validated by the current pandemic data. This seems a rather difficult task because available data are missing some critical information: some infected individuals are asymptomatic and incubation periods are unobservable.

Education and University Reforms (1984 – present)

Kobayashi has been an opinion leader to improve the Japanese education system, especially its universities. He has been an invited speaker and author in numerous meetings and journal articles. He has been publicly advocating the importance of programs for gifted students and doctoral students in Japan ever since 1984 [19-2, 19-12], and the call for promoting creative and innovative minds in Japan [19-5, 19-6].

He has contributed to reforming Japanese universities, criticizing the inbreeding practice in Japan’s top universities, and urging to implement peer review of professors’ research, and evaluation of courses and instructors by the students. He also emphasizes the importance of studying abroad. His guest speech in 2010 delivered at the Entrance Ceremony (or Opening Exercise) of the Graduate School of the University of Tokyo stirred all kinds of responses.5

On April 24 and 25, 2019, he organized and hosted at his residence in Mito, Japan what is called a “Mito Conference6 in which various problems and issues that surround Japanese universities were identified and the participants exchanged opinions. The speakers/participants included such noted individuals as, Hiroyuki Abe (President of Engineering Academy of Japan, President emeritus of Tohoku Univ.), Teruo Fujii (Executive VP then and now President, Univ. of Tokyo), Takeo Kanade, (Prof.emeritus, Carnegie Mellon University), Kiyoshi Kurokawa (Prof. emeritus, Univ. of Tokyo, Former President of the Science Council of Japan), Takashi Masuda (VP, Funai Foundation, President emeritus, Electro- Communication Univ.), Hideo Miyahara, (Former President of NICT, President emeritus, Osaka Univ) , Yasuji Sekine (Prof. emeritus, Univ. of Tokyo and Tokyo Science Univ.), and other prominent opinion leaders.

Current Status:

As described in the introduction of this biography, Kobayashi is committed to expand his scholarship programs at three institutions to which he hold the closest affinity: Princeton University, the University of Tokyo and the University of California at Berkeley. He and his wife Masae, both Japanese citizens and U.S. permanent residents, have recently decided to move back from Japan to the US, being convinced that it would be the only way for them to continue giving a portion of their income and assets in the U.S. to the three institutions, given that the US-Japan tax treaty would not recognize donations to US charities. Consequently, they have recently moved their primary residence to Honolulu, Hawaii.


1 A shorter biography can be found in Wikipedia Hisashi Kobayashi (in English) or 小林久志 – Wikipedia (in Japanese).

2 [19-1] means the 1st paper listed in in his research field (19) of the journal/conference publications.

3 Dean of Faculty Office, Princeton University

4 H, Kobayashi and P.R. Prucnal, “Broadband Communications Networks for Multiple Services,” Grant from New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, March 1989-May 1992

5 https://hp.hisashikobayashi.com/speech-at-the-opening-exercises-at-the-university-of-tokyo/

6 The term “Mito Conference” was dubbed by Prof. Yasuji Sekine (the co-organizer) who wrote two articles in the column “Wave” in the Denki Shinbun (Electric Power Newspaper) in his summary of the meeting.

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