Kyoto Tachibana University Welcomes Professor Kiyoharu Aizawa, a Leading Expert in Image Engineering and Media Processing, Recipient of the Spring 2026 Medal with Purple Ribbon, to the Faculty of Digital Media

Kyoto Tachibana University (Yamashina-ku, Kyoto City; President: Tomohiro Okada) has welcomed Professor Kiyoharu Aizawa, a leading authority in image engineering and media processing research and a recipient of the Spring 2026 Medal with Purple Ribbon, as a professor in the Faculty of Digital Media starting April 2026. Professor Aizawa has consistently conducted research in the field of image engineering and media processing, from the establishment of basic theories to their application and social implementation. He has pioneered various research topics in this field, including information compression technologies represented by model-based coding, advanced information acquisition through smart sensing, recording and analysis of human activities such as lifelogs and foodlogs, and image processing technologies for manga. In recent years, he has also engaged in cutting-edge research, including multimodal AI, significantly contributing to the creation of new value through the utilization of image and video information. These research achievements have been highly evaluated internationally, and he has received numerous honors to date, including the IEICE Yonezawa Founders Medal (1990), Japan IBM Science Award (2002), ITE Niwa Takayanagi Achievement Award (2013), IEEE Fellow (2016), Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award for Science and Technology (Research Category) (2025), Japan Broadcasting Corporation Broadcasting Culture Award (2026), and the Medal with Purple Ribbon (Spring 2026). The recent awarding of the Spring 2026 Medal with Purple Ribbon highly recognizes Professor Aizawa's academic achievements and his contributions to the social implementation of those achievements, which have greatly contributed to the development of science, technology, and culture in Japan. By welcoming Professor Aizawa, who has led research and social implementation in Japan's image engineering and media processing fields, Kyoto Tachibana University aims to explore new forms of education and research that are not bound by precedent, while envisioning a changing social structure due to the advancement of science and technology, and also to engage in regional creation centered on digital technology. Kiyoharu Aizawa Affiliation/Position: Professor, Department of Digital Media, Faculty of Digital Media, Kyoto Tachibana University Highest Education: Completed doctoral course at Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo Degree: Doctor of Engineering Specialties: Media Informatics, Image Processing, Computer Vision, Multimedia Processing Doctor of Engineering. Born in Tokyo in 1959. Graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo in 1983. After completing the doctoral course at the Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo in 1988, he served as Assistant, Lecturer, and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. In 2001, he was appointed Professor at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo. Subsequently, he served as Professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo. Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo. Specially Appointed Professor at the Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo; Professor at Tokyo University of Science; Director of foo.log Inc. Numerous key positions including Member of the Science Council of Japan, Chairperson of the IEC TC-124 Wearable Electronic Devices and Technologies Domestic Deliberation Committee, Expert Member (TA18, WG12) of IEC TC-100 Audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment, and Chairperson of the IEICE Comic Engineering Research Group. ### Main Awards IEICE Yonezawa Founders Medal (1990), Japan IBM Science Award (2002), ITE Niwa Takayanagi Achievement Award (2013), IEEE Fellow (2016), Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award for Science and Technology (Research Category) (2025), Japan Broadcasting Corporation Broadcasting Culture Award (2026), Medal with Purple Ribbon (Spring 2026), and many others. ### Main Projects Research on image processing and multimedia processing connecting the real world and content. Research focuses on multimedia processing, primarily image processing, including the construction of VR spaces from 360-degree videos, the development of Manga AI and the Manga109 dataset, and FoodLog Athl for supporting meal recording. Research topics are diverse, including image recognition, multimodal LLM, and data construction. ### A comment from Professor Kiyoharu Aizawa I am conducting research from the perspective of media processing on familiar issues such as video and space, manga, and food. My goal is to create resources that will ultimately be useful to the research and development community. ### Kyoto Tachibana University Faculty of Digital Media Establishment Year: April 2026 Enrollment Capacity: Day course (100 students), Correspondence course (180 students) Features of Learning: The Faculty of Digital Media features learning that reciprocates between engineering technology and creation technology. As part of their first-year education, all students acquire basic information system technologies/skills such as programming and design, and set research themes according to their interests, such as visual arts, sound, and games. Utilizing digital technology and media, the aim is to create new social value.