User:Akihiko.shirai

Akihiko SHIRAI, Ph.D
Recently virtual reality has become the hot topic in the tech and game industry, however, the question still remains how can we define the "Entertainment VR" ? He has interest in how human interacts with games, virtual reality, and science of play which can be seem from his past researches, development pieces, experience design in international opportunities, and his vision for the future of this domain. Everyday we are constantly exposed to many forms of digital media entertainment products like smart phone and/or mobile games. Latest computer games may grab player's interests, however its hard to link theoratical research with development cases. Speaker has interested in entertainment virtual reality, interactive systems, games (classic also), computer graphics, computer vision, intelligent systems, science communication, networking, education for a long time, and he has various professional creation experiences as video game engineer, haptic contents designer, virtual TV studio, theme park attractions in Laval, science communicator and exhibition concept designer in national science museum, Miraikan. His production and research methods for "Virtual Reality Entertainment systems" is written in a book The future of Game design - Science in Entertainment Systems(Japanese Title: 白井博士の未来のゲームデザイン-エンタテイメントシステムの科学 http://aki.shirai.as/entsys/). His extended experiences in organizing Laval Virtual ReVolution and IVRC, International collegiate Virtual Reality Contest, will be valuable in demonstrating how we can collaborate and formulate plans to encourage student innovation in project based learning which includes public field testing with social understanding.

Biography
AKIHIKO SHIRAI, Ph.D in Engineering, has obtained a bachelor of Photo Engineering and master of Image Processing from Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics. Afterwards he worked for Canon and Criterion as a game development consultant to distribute RenderWare, a multi-platform graphics middleware for the game industry until 2001. He went back to academia to study intelligent systems and obtained a Ph.D. in the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan in 2004 with research concerning the “Tangible Playroom”, an entertainment system for young children using haptics, a floor screen and a physics engine. He was a R&D researcher at NHK-ES in Japan, focusing on the next generation’s TV production environment before moving to ENSAM Presence & Innovation Laboratory in France from 2004 to 2007 for R&D of a Virtual Reality theme park project. He worked for National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan), Tokyo Japan, as a science communicator and exhibition planner from 2008 to 2010. Starting from 2010, he works in the Information Media Department at Kanagawa Institute of Technology (KAIT) as an associate professor.