PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hiroya Fujisaki

Also known as Fujisaki Hiroya

Hiroya Fujisaki is a speech scientist whose model links phrase and accent structure to the pitch contours of spoken Japanese. He earned an SM at MIT in 1959 and coauthored a 1984 model for Japanese sentence intonation with Keikichi Hirose. He led projects in speech synthesis and spoken information retrieval, and founded the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing in 1990. MIT awarded him a Bronze Beaver in 2000. As of October 2026, he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

Timeline

  1. 1959–1984

    MIT and Japanese pitch model

    He earns an SM at MIT in 1959. In 1984, he and Keikichi Hirose present a quantitative model that generates Japanese sentence pitch contours from phrase and accent components.

  2. 1984–1985

    Japanese speech synthesis project

    From 1984 to 1985, he is the principal investigator on a project to build a speech synthesis system for Japanese texts that uses natural-language understanding.

  3. 1990

    Founding ICSLP

    He founds and chairs the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) in 1990.

  4. 2000

    MIT award and spoken dialogue

    MIT names him among its Bronze Beaver award recipients in 2000. Around 2000, he leads the Japanese National Project on Information Retrieval through Human-Machine Spoken Dialogue.

  5. September 2016

    A Belgrade lecture

    In September 2016, he gives a lecture at the University of Belgrade on speech prosody, speech perception, and spoken dialogue. The talk covers his model for pitch contours and a system for academic information retrieval through human-machine dialogue.

  6. As of October 2026

    Tokyo professor emeritus

    In 2025, he serves on O-COCOSDA's International Advisory Committee, which lists Tokyo University as his affiliation. As of October 2026, he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo. His earlier Tokyo role is Professor of Electronic Engineering in the School of Engineering.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. Four alumni awarded Bronze Beaver for their service news.mit.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Analysis of voice fundamental frequency contours for declarative sentences of Japanese jstage.jst.go.jp. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Research on a speech synthesis system for Japanese texts based on the natural language understanding kaken.nii.ac.jp. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. ISCA Honorary Members isca-speech.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. IN SEARCH OF MODELS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE PROCESSING etf.bg.ac.rs. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. “Buddha has more influence on Japan than India” – 1 starofmysore.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. The 28th International Conference of the Oriental COCOSDA ococosda2025.id. Checked 19 October 2026.