Farewell message from Dr. Akinori Tanaka

Our colleague Akinori Tanaka moves on to a new carrier at RIKEN AIP as of April 1st. We all will miss him and wish him the best of luck in his latest endeavor. Here is a message from Akinori Tanaka:

First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues, assistants, and all the people for sharing time in iTHEMS. I really enjoyed discussing and chatting, even though I spent a lot of time online.

In fact, this is the 2nd time for me to leave here. When I started my research as a member of iTHES, not iTHEMS at that time, I was working on theoretical physics. But, in addition to my own research, I also enjoyed chatting with my colleagues and getting new concepts: machine learning and related topics, and it opened up my next career. As a result, I returned to iTHEMS as a machine learning researcher, as you know. It was very surprising for me that all the activities were really sophisticated compared to the ones in iTHES, and I was happy to participate in the activities in information theory study group, SSP workshop, and chatting after the coffee meeting.

Now I leave this message as if this was farewell, but it's not. I will move to RIKEN AIP from this April as a senior research scientist, but hold a post in iTHEMS also. I would like to deepen my thoughts on machine learning from mathematical, biological, and physical perspectives, so I'm happy if all of you discuss/chat with me as I have so far, even after April.