Swiss Re Annual Forum 2018

Keynote Speaker

Tetsuya Ogata
Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University
Joint Appointed Fellow, Artificial Intelligence Research Center, AIST

He received the B.S., M.S., and D.E. degrees in mechanical engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1993, 1995, and 2000, respectively. He was a Research Associate with Waseda University from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was a Research Scientist with the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan. From 2003 to 2012, he was an Associate Professor with the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Since 2012, he has been a Professor with the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University. From 2009 to 2015, he was a JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) PREST Researcher. From 2017, he is a Joint Appointed Fellow with the Artificial Intelligence Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tokyo. He served as director of the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) from 2014 to 2015 and of the Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) from 2016 to 2018. He is currently a director of Japan Deep Learning Association (JDLA) from 2017. His current research interests include deep learning for robot motion control, human–robot interaction, and dynamics of human–robot mutual adaptation.

 Forum Speakers

Hitoshi Imaoka
Research Fellow & Director, Biometrics Research Laboratories
NEC Corporation
Chief Engineer of Safer Cities Solutions Division. Ph.D. in Engineering

He joined the R&D Division of NEC in 1997 where he was engaged in the research of neuro-visual information processing. He subsequently transferred to NEC Multimedia Research Laboratories in 2002 and worked on the research of facial recognition technology. His focus has been on research and development related to facial comparison algorithms, contributing to the commercialisation of NEC’s “NeoFace” product, which applied facial recognition technology. “NeoFace” has been adopted in 45 countries, including for use at overseas airport immigration control and at Universal Studios Japan. Since 2010, he has worked as the R&D Team Leader at NEC, contributing to four consecutive acquisitions (to date) of top performance in the NIST Benchmark Test for Facial Recognition Technologies. He has been named the recipient of many prizes, including the following: Information Processing Society of Japan “Kiyasu Special Industrial Achievement Award” (2010), NEC President’s Award (2011, 2018), Advanced Technology Prize for Pioneering Creativity “Fuji Sankei Business i Award” (2011), Management of Technology/Innovation Prize “the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award” (2015). He has also completed a doctorate course majoring in Applied Physics at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University.

Daichi Iwata
Head of FinTech Business Development Office, NEC Corporation

He founded brees cooperation, joint venture between NEC Corporation and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation as intrepreneur. While he serves as a board member of the company, he keeps driving creating new services around FinTech at NEC Corporation. His prime passion now is to incubate services for digital trust and inclusion needed for coming digital society, and to cultivate innovation culture within traditional companies.

Kornélia Papp
NLP (Natural Language Processing) Data Scientist, Group Digital & Information Services, Swiss Re

She is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) Data Scientist at Swiss Re in Zurich. She holds a PhD in cognitive linguistics and has more than 10 years’ experience in language technologies. Among others, Kornélia worked on projects in the area of speech technology, machine translation, fraud detection and automatic text generation.
She joined Swiss Re's Machine Intelligence & Strategy team in February 2016 as the lead Data Scientist for language technologies. She is a native Hungarian, who calls Iceland her second home, where she lived and studied during her undergraduate years. Currently, she resides in Switzerland where she also leads the Natural Language Processing & Text Analytics Meetup Zurich.

Yoshihiro Muragaki
Professor, Faculty of Advanced Techno-Surgery (FATS), Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Dept. of Neurosurgery, Tokyo Women's Medical University / Associate Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University (School of Advanced Science and Engineering)

He joined the Tokyo Women's Medical University Neurological Center department of Neurosurgery in 1986. He then went on to study at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania for three years starting from 1992. Later, he worked as the Head of the Department of Neurosurgery Medical Office at Tokyo Women's Medical University from 1999; and since 2011 has held concurrent posts as Professor at the Tokyo Women's Medical University Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Faculty of Advanced Techno-Surgery (FATS)/Dep. of Neurosurgery.
He has also acted as a member/director of various investigative committees and academic societies, including the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) Science Committee Meeting (Medical Equipment), Joint Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for Index Evaluation of Next-Generation Medical Equipment (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) and the Investigative Committee for Evaluation and Consideration of Medical Equipment Development Guidelines (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering, Japanese Congress for Brain Tumor Surgery, and the Japan Society for Neuro-Oncology.
He has been named the recipient of many prizes, including the following: Industry-Academia-Government, Minister of State for Science and Technology Prize (2010), Top prize at the Microsoft Innovation Awards (2013), The Japan Society of Ultrasonics in Medicine 87th Academic Meeting Prize for Excellent Paper (2014), and Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering Ogino Prize (2014).
He graduated from Kobe University School of Medicine in 1986, completed a doctorate course in Medicine at Tokyo Women's Medical University in 1997, and completed a doctorate course with Cooperative Major in Advanced Biomedical Sciences at Waseda University Faculty of Science and Engineering (Biomedical Sciences) in 2014.

 Panel Discussion

Moderator

Soichiro Takagi
Professor, Executive Research Fellow, and the General Manager of Research Division at Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM) at International University of Japan

He is the director of the Blockchain Economic Research Lab at GLOCOM and also a visiting associate professor at The University of Tokyo. He also served as an Asia Program Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, etc. His major field is information economics, focusing on the relationship between information technology and the economy. He has examined a variety of topics including offshore outsourcing, cloud computing, open data, sharing economy, digital currency, and blockchain. He has authored many books and articles, including “Blockchain Economics” (in Japanese, Shoeisha), “Reweaving the Economy: How IT Affects the Borders of Country and Organization” (University of Tokyo Press). He received Ph.D. in information studies from The University of Tokyo.

Panelists (in Japanese alphaterical order)

Daichi Iwata
Head of FinTech Business Development Office, NEC Corporation

See above for details

Naoya Bessho
Senior Adviser, Yahoo Japan Corporation

After he obtained LL.M. degree at Keio University, Faculty of Law, he joined Mochida Pharmaceutical Co. in 1981 and worked as a manager of legal division.  In 1999, he joined Yahoo Japan Corporation and was appointed General Counsel in April 2000.  He served as a Corporate Officer from 2012 to 2018.  In April 2018 he was appointed Senior Adviser.

He has been in charge of any and all legal matters relating to the company, such as corporate governance, compliance, contracts, intellectual property, litigation, public policy and so on.  Especially, as General Counsel of a leading Internet company in Japan, he has been involved in public policy and government-related issues.  He still serves as a member of several governmental committees.

Masayuki Watanabe
Partner, Attorney at Law, Miyake & Partners

He obtained an LL.B. degree at the University of Tokyo in 1995, after which he qualified as an attorney in 2001. During this time, from 1998 to 2000, he worked for the Prime Minister's Office. In 2001, he completed Legal Training and Research Institute of the Supreme Court of Japan. Later, in 2007, he obtained an LL.M. degree at Columbia Law School, after which he joined the law firm Miyake & Partners in 2009. His primary focuses in his practice are privacy law, financial regulation, AML/CFT regulation and gaming regulation. He serves as an Outside Director for both Ohsho Food Service Co. and Nittoku Co., Ltd, a part-time professor of Seikei University Law School and also acts as an Expert Member of the IR Promotion Committee. He has authored many books on privacy law, money laundering and the My Number system.

 Opening and Closing Remarks

Jayne Plunkett
CEO Reinsurance Asia, Swiss Re

She started her career at John Deere Insurance Company in 1992, where she held various positions in the Commercial Lines segment in Property and Casualty. In 1999 she joined GEC Insurance Solutions, where she served as Insurance Pricing Team Leader, Deputy Chief Reserving Actuary, Head of Casualty Risk Management, and Head of Planning and Analysis.

Following the acquisition of GEC Insurance Solutions by Swiss Re in 2006, She joined Swiss Re as Head of the Kansas City Hub for Property & Casualty. From 2008 to 2012 she worked in Asia as Head of Casualty Underwriting for the region. In 2013 she assumed the global position as Head Casualty Reinsurance, also managing the unit dealing with large and complex transactions for P&C Reinsurance. On 1 July 2016, she was appointed as Chief Executive Officer Reinsurance Asia, Regional President Asia and a member of the Group Executive Committee.

She is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. Additionally, she was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2010.

She was born in 1970 and is an American citizen.
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Drake University, USA

Atsuhiro Dodo
Head of Japan, Swiss Re

He is the Head and Country President of Swiss Re Japan, effective 1 July 2016.

He joined Swiss Re in 2005 as a Natural Catastrophe Specialist, where he led the development of a new Swiss Re proprietary earthquake model for Japan, and supported the calibration of Japan's typhoon model. In 2007, he took up the responsibility of Property Treaty Underwriting and then became the Head of Property Hub Desk Japan in 2010 contributing to business steering pre and post Tohoku earthquake and Thai flood events. In 2015, he was appointed as Head of Client Markets Japan for P&C.

He has a PhD in Systems Engineering from Cornell University in New York and a Master of Science degree from Kyoto University, Japan.

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