Background Yutaka Tokuda is an applied scientist, HCI researcher, and new media artist investigating novel human-computer interface and display technologies to blur the boundary between physical and digital. He has led multidisciplinary display and interface design projects in both academia and industry in Japan, US, and UK, exploring new possibilities of spatial augmented reality display and programmable materials which can physically modulate the shape, colour, sound, and tactile properties.
His journey of exploring novel display technologies began since he joined Cyber Interface Lab at the University of Tokyo in 2006. He worked as a research assistant of Digital Public Art Project in 2009-2010 and demonstrated a public installation art of mid-air image projection at Haneda Airport in Tokyo for three months. In 2010, he launched NPO Tokyo Interaction Center (2010-2012) with LM3LABS to create a community space for human-machine natural interaction and mixed reality technologies. After working as a UX designer at Panasonic (2011-2012) and Rich Media Specialist at Google Japan (2012), he joined Microsoft Research Applied Sciences Group in Redmond (US) as a research intern and initiated new project for 3D floating display (2013-2014). He demonstrated the first double-layered floating display system at Microsoft Tech Fest 2014. To investigate applications of 3D floating display in Japanese industry, he worked as a Chief Engineer at SN partners (2014-2015) and a researcher of industry-academia-government corporation at Yamamoto Lab in Utsunomiya University (2015-2016) and supported new business development for multiple leading companies (Koto Co. Ltd, Nippon Carbide Industries, BMW). Yutaka also explored new possibilities of 3D shape changing display and programmable material as a research fellow at the Interact Lab in the University of Sussex (2017-2019), and presented shape changing 3D fog screen, reconfigurable acoustic metamaterial, and programmable liquid metal. Before joining CityU, he was a floating display researcher at Parity Innovations in Japan and investigated novel mid-air interaction and pen-drawing techniques (2020-2021).
Yutaka published his works at top conferences in the field of HCI and VR/AR (e.g., CHI, UIST, ISMAR, TEI, ISS) and demonstrated novel display works at major international exhibitions (e.g., Siggraph Asia, Ars Electronica, Microsoft TechFest, Cheltenham Science Festival). He won two best paper awards at the international conference, IEEE VSMM’10 and International Display Workshops’15, and received a special recognition award at The Augmented Humans’21 conference. His research works have been often featured in global mass media from across Europe, Asia, and America, such as Reuters, South China Morning Post, The Straits Time, USA Today, and Yahoo! Japan.
Yutaka received his BSc degree in Applied Physics Honors (minor in ECE) from Purdue University (2006) and earned his Master’s degree in Information Science and Technology from The University of Tokyo (2008). He earned a PhD degree in Engineering from the Research Center of Advance Science and Technology (RCAST) at The University of Tokyo (2020) under the supervision of Prof. Michitaka Hirose. He was awarded a Purdue Summer Research Fellowship (Purdue University, 2005) and Calbee Cambridge Scholarship (University of Cambridge, 2006).