R10 WIE Personality of the Month – Takako Hashimoto

Tokyo Section

Takako Hashimoto graduated from Ochanomizu University, and received a Ph.D. in computer science from the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering at University of Tsukuba in 2005. She worked for 24 years at the software R&D center of Ricoh Co. Ltd., Japan. During her tenure at Ricoh, she spearheaded the development of many software products as a technical leader. She acquired enormous project management experience including international collaborative research handling. In April 2009, she joined Chiba University of Commerce (CUC) as an Associate Professor. In due course, she was promoted as a Professor of CUC. In 2015, she was a visiting researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.  In 2016, she was appointed as Director of Institute of Economic Research and as Vice-President of CUC in 2018. Her research interests include data mining research and social media analysis, especially topic extraction from millions of tweets related to disasters such as the East Japan Great Earthquake. She has conducted global researches on SDGs for achieving 100% renewable energy environment as well.

Various IEEE leadership positions held in the past included IEEE MGA Membership Recruitment and Recovery Committee Chair (2017-2018), IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Chair (2015-2016), and IEEE R10 WIE Coordinator (2011-2014). She was an honorary recipient of the 2019 MGA Larry K. Wilson Transnational Award, one of the most prestigious awards in IEEE MGA. Her citation for the 2019 MGA Larry K. Wilson Transnational Award reads as: “For inspiring leadership and contributions to IEEE Women in Engineering across the world with the mission: Inspire, Encourage, Engage and Empower.”

“Simay Akar, Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, and Nivas Ravichandran! Thank you for all the support and trust. Also my gratitude to Hideko Kunii, Akinori Nishihara, Nita K Patel, Ramalatha Marimuthu, Lisa Lazareck-Asunta, Keyana Tennant, Charmain Williams, Paola Bringas, Georedna Brown Onyesoh, Francesca Mingione and all the friends in IEEE for their valuable support and trust for allowing me to contribute IEEE WIE activities. I am what I am today. Thank you very much everyone!

Through IEEE WIE activities, especially by being the IEEE WIE international chair, I was able to have experiences as a leader. Generally, especially for Asian women, it is a struggle to be given opportunities to take lead roles. Actually, I used to fear to be a leader. But through the IEEE WIE Chair experiences, I was able to face my fears and hesitations. Now I am the Vice-President of my university. In Japan, it is not easy to be in a high position for a female professor. I am sure that IEEE volunteer experiences helped me to be promoted in my chosen field as well.

Therefore I really recommend STEM professionals to join IEEE. IEEE motivates you, and definitely helps your career development. You can enhance your network, find new friends, mentors, and role models, be global, and be a leader. In addition, you can find the joy of being a volunteer and contribute to society.

Please open the door to a new world with IEEE”.

Takako Hashimoto