Introduction to Professor Yuichi Tanaka and His Lab at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself (and your University/Lab)?
I am an associate professor at the Department of EECS, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), and am leading the MSP group. TUAT is a national university in Japan and is located in Koganei-shi, Tokyo, around 20 mins from Shinjuku terminal. I love my university especially because there is a lot of green on our campus (even in Tokyo)!
My group has almost 15 students from undergraduate to Ph.D. courses. We are mainly working on graph signal processing and neural networks on graphs.

2. What have been your most significant research contributions up to now?
Sampling signals on graphs. Finding interconnections between sampling in time/spatial domain and graph domain is interesting and useful for many applications. Please read our recent review paper on IEEE SPM!

3. What problems in your research field deserve more attention (or what problems will you like to solve) in the next few years, and why?
Real applications of graph signal processing. While we still have many things to build up theory of graph signal processing, applying its theory into practice is especially important in the next few years. Constructing a useful dataset for GSP is also beneficial for researchers (like building a sandbox :)).

4. What advice would you like to give to the young generation of researchers/engineers?
Be optimistic and work on theoretical fields before getting old (i.e., do not become a parameter tuner). The number of published papers is only one aspect of your research. Trying many things is important, but make your own goal first!