In collaboration with the Lee/Ueno Laboratory (Professor Nobuaki Lee and Assistant Professor Sei Ueno, Department of Computer Science, Media and Information Course), Sako Laboratory is engaged in research on music information science based on speech processing technology and related pattern recognition technology, and on automatic sign language recognition. Every year, around three fourth-year undergraduate students are assigned to the laboratory, and if students entering the postgraduate (master's) course and international students and graduate students from other universities are included, the group has a size of a little more than 10 students (30 at most if the Lee/Ueno Laboratory is included).
Research topics
For an overview of our research, please see the introduction to our main research topics and the list of previous theses. Research topics are defined after being assigned to a laboratory and after meetings with teaching staff. Details are usually worked out gradually over a period of one to two months, with repeated weekly meetings. The basic approach to setting a research topic is to take the student's interests and inspiration as a starting point and then, with the advice of the teaching staff, to investigate similar and related research, gradually exploring and converging on the aims and questions of the research.
Activities
In addition to laboratory activities such as study groups and debriefing sessions, other laboratory events (ranging from research-related activities to regular drinking parties and seminar trips) are organised jointly with the Lee/Ueno laboratory.Research groups are organised with units of approximately three to four students of different years (to be reviewed each academic year) with close research interests, who read papers and texts in a round-reading format and support the undergraduates in their research progress.Each student has a research meeting with a teacher once a week for fourth year undergraduates and once a fortnight for Masters students.Regular meetings are important, with an emphasis on 'face-to-face' meetings, whether or not progress is being made.
Location
The students room (approx. 100 m2), seminar room (shared with other laboratories) and teacher's room (Sako's room) are located on the 4th floor of Building No. 20. Normal research activities are carried out in the students rooms, research group meetings and meetings with Sako are held in the student rooms, and seminars with the Lee/Ueno laboratories are held in classrooms or meeting rooms on NITech. In the students room, each student is allocated a desk with a portable laptop and two external monitors.