PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Tatsuya Kawahara

Also known as Kawahara Tatsuya

Tatsuya Kawahara is a Kyoto University researcher in speech recognition and spoken dialogue. He built his career through engineering faculty posts and informatics professorships, with work on dialogue systems and conversational robots. In 2019, he describes machine-learned attentive listening for ERICA, and in 2020 he coauthors an end-to-end speech-recognition study for Ainu folklore. He served as dean of informatics, president of APSIPA and secretary general of ISCA, became an ISCA Fellow in 2026, and is a professor of speech and audio processing at Kyoto University as of October 2026.

Born
1964
Works
677
Citations
7,074
h-index
38
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1987–1995

    Kyoto studies and early posts

    He studies at Kyoto University's Faculty of Engineering in 1987 and its Graduate School of Engineering master's program in 1989. He becomes a research associate in 1990 and an associate professor in 1995, both in the Faculty of Engineering.

  2. 2003–2015

    Professorships in informatics

    He becomes a professor at Kyoto University's Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies in 2003. He begins a professorship in its Graduate School of Informatics in July 2015.

  3. 2019

    ERICA learns attentive listening

    In 2019, he explains the Kyoto, Osaka and ATR team's update to ERICA's dialogue system. Machine learning generates attentive-listening responses from a counseling dialogue corpus, and five-minute tests show dynamic conversations with backchannels and partial repeats.

  4. 2020

    End-to-end recognition for Ainu

    In 2020, he coauthors a study that builds a speech corpus and end-to-end recognition for Ainu folklore. Its syllable-based model reaches about 60% word and over 85% phone accuracy in speaker-open tests.

  5. 2020–2025

    Leading speech societies

    He serves as dean of Kyoto University's Graduate School of Informatics from 2020 to 2023, president of APSIPA from January 2023 to December 2024, and secretary general of ISCA from August 2023 to August 2025.

  6. March 2026

    Ainu and Shuri speech talk

    He is scheduled to present at NINJAL's 160th colloquium in March 2026 on automatic speech recognition and synthesis for Ainu and the Okinawa Shuri dialect.

  7. 2026

    An ISCA Fellowship

    ISCA names him a Fellow in 2026 for contributions to human-to-human speech recognition and dialogue models.

  8. Since 2015

    Professor in speech processing

    As of October 2026, he is a professor in the Speech and Audio Processing area at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Informatics; he has held the role since July 2015.

Career

  1. Since 1990Kyoto UniversityResearch Associate, Associate Professor
  2. 2023–2024Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing AssociationPresident
  3. 2008–2011National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
  4. 2004–2006Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
  5. 2002–2006Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International

Education

  1. From 1989Kyoto UniversityMaster's
  2. From 1987Kyoto University

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Kyoto University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Kyoto University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Kyoto University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Tatsuya Kawahara yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. KAWAHARA Tatsuya | Kyoto University–Inamori Foundation Joint Kyoto Prize Symposium | KUIP kuip.hq.kyoto-u.ac.jp. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Talking to an android | KYOTO UNIVERSITY kyoto-u.ac.jp. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. [2002.06675] Speech Corpus of Ainu Folklore and End-to-end Speech Recognition for Ainu Language arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. The 160th NINJAL Colloquium: Automatic Speech Recognition and Synthesis of the Ainu and Okinawa Shuri Dialect ninjal.ac.jp. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. ISCA Fellows 2026: congratulations! isca-speech.org. Checked 20 October 2026.