Updated: 4/12/2024

Jun Kato

E-mail
jun.kato@aist.go.jp (work), i@junkato.jp (personal)
Mail
Bâtiment 650, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 ORSAY Cedex, France
URL
https://junkato.jp

Jun Kato is a senior researcher at AIST, where he works on Human-Computer Interaction research, more specifically, designing user interfaces and integrated environments for creativity support. He also serves as a technical advisor at Arch Inc., a Japanese animation production company, and leads Arch Research.

He received a Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo (2014). Prior to graduation, he worked as a research intern at Microsoft Research and Adobe Research. He has regularly gained academic recognitions such as Honorable Mentions at ACM CHI (2013, 2015, 2023) and IPSJ/ACM Award (2021).

Research Interests

Human-computer interaction, creativity support, physical computing, programming experience, animation studies

Work Experience

Université Paris-Saclay

Visiting position, in parallel with continuing current positions (AIST and Arch Inc.), to conduct research on human-computer interaction, particularly theories and tools for creativity support.

April 2024-
Visiting Scientist, Ex-Situ Group, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique (LISN)

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

Tenured position to lead research projects, aimed not only at publishing academic papers but also deploying outcomes as publicly-available software; actively collaborating with companies to drive societal impact.

September 2018-
Senior Researcher, Media Interaction Group, Human Informatics and Interaction Research Institute (HIIRI)
April 2014-
August 2018
Researcher, Media Interaction Group, Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

Arch Inc.

Founder of the research and development division and principal investigator; leading research projects to publish academic papers and deploy outcomes in the Japanese animation industry.

July 2018-
Technical Advisor, Arch Research

Research Internships

August 2013-
November 2013
Creative Technologies Lab, Adobe Research Seattle

Worked with Jovan Popovic and Joel Brandt; developed a research prototype of a new product.

June 2012-
September 2012
Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) Group, Microsoft Research Redmond

Worked with Sebastian Burckhardt and Michał Moskal; developed a live programming feature of TouchDevelop, whose research component was published as an ACM PLDI'13 full paper.

January 2012-
April 2012
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Group, Microsoft Research Asia

Worked with Xiang Cao and Sean McDirmid; developed extensions to an integrated development environment and wrote a full research paper later published at ACM UIST'12.

Miscellaneous

July 2010-
August 2010
Intern, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital

Led a team of 3 students; surveyed previous industrial effort on home automation and proposed a new business plan with a working prototype.

August 2009-
September 2009
Software Development Engineer Intern, Microsoft

Developed an online code reviewing tool to improve the team's productivity.

April 2008-
March 2013
Assistant Researcher, JST ERATO Igarashi Design UI Project

Developed an interactive and graphical simulator and a software toolkit for controlling mobile robots; built a FTIR multi-touch display and developed its middleware for tracking fingers.

Research Grants

October 2022-
March 2025
JST ACT-X (Grant Number JPMJAX22A3)

Principal investigator; funded 6M Japanese Yen for 2.5 years.

April 2021-
March 2024
JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (Grant Number 21H04917)

Co-investigator; funded 42.3M Japanese Yen for 3 years.

April 2011-
March 2014
JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists DC1

Funded 1.9M Japanese Yen for 3 years as a research fellow.

2012
Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship

Awarded among around one hundred Ph.D candidates and funded $10,000 for a year.

April 2011-
March 2012
Microsoft IJARC CORE Program

Principal investigator; funded $15,000 for a year.

December 2008-
August 2009
IPA MITOU Program

Project leader (principal investigator); funded 7M Japanese yen for half a year.

*Private fundings for collaborative research are unlisted for their confidential nature.

Research-driven Innovations

Products and Services

2018-
Griffith (Arch Inc.)

Griffith is a web-based tool for authoring and sharing Japanese animation storyboards (e-conte). As the principal investigator at Arch Research, I have been responsible for its research and development. To appropriately design the tool, it was necessary to dive deeply into the historical and cultural aspects of the animation production process, which we reported at the Society for Animation Studies annual conferences.

2017-
Songle Sync (AIST)

Songle Sync is a large-scale web-based platform for synchronizing various devices to music playback. It has been used in commercial events to synchronize city lights, fireworks, and thousands of smartphones. I was involved in the discussion of core algorithm development, developed it as a toolkit, wrote an ACM Multimedia '18 paper, and have continuously served as the producer of commercial events.

2014-
TextAlive (AIST)

TextAlive is a web-based authoring tool for lyric videos, used by both professional and amateur artists (>23k video revisions), recently featured in professional VR live performances (4 events and 61 songs in 2023). As its project leader, I have been responsible for its research, development, and service operation. Relevant topics have been covered in several academic articles including ACM CHI '15 and '23 award-winning papers.

2012
TouchDevelop (Microsoft)

TouchDevelop is a programming environment optimized for touch-enabled devices, which was retired in 2018. Thanks to the team's open and creative culture, as a research intern, I could take an essential role in developing its novel live programming feature, which displays interactive user interfaces for editing a running program. The core technologies we developed were published at ACM PLDI '13 and filed as a patent US9286038B2.

*The complete list of projects can be found at https://junkato.jp/projects.

Patents

2013 (applied)
2016 (granted)
Sebastian Burckhardt, Manuel Fahndrich, Peli de Halleux, Sean McDirmid, Michal Moskal, Nikolai Tillmann, Jun Kato (Microsoft). Interface development and operation. US9286038B2.
2013 (applied)
2017 (granted)
Xiang Cao, Jun Kato, Sean McDirmid (Microsoft). Programming interface. US9639330B2.

Education

The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

April 2011-
March 2014

Doctor of Philosophy / Information Science and Technology (Computer Science), Thesis: Integrated development environment with graphical representations for development of programs with real-world input and output.

Supervisor: Takeo Igarashi; thesis committee: Masami Hagiya, Shigeru Chiba, Shinichi Honiden, Toshiyuki Masui

April 2009-
March 2011

Master of Science / Information Science and Technology (Computer Science), Thesis: A Toolkit for Prototyping Interactive Robot Applications

Supervisor: Takeo Igarashi

April 2005-
March 2009

Bachelor of Science / Information Science, Thesis: Multi-touch Interface for Controlling Multiple Mobile Robots

Supervisor: Takeo Igarashi

Awards and Honors

December 6, 2024
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia '24 Technical Communications Best Paper Award
April 23, 2023
ACM CHI '23 Honorable Mention Award
February 18, 2023
Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter Distinguished Young Researcher Award

Awarded for substantial academic contributions in HCI, pioneering the "programming experience" domain, organizing major international conferences in HCI, and turning academic achievements into multiple practical services to contribute to the industry.

March 15, 2022
ISID '22 Best Poster Award
October 13, 2021
IEEE VL/HCC '21 Best Short Paper Award
March 18, 2021
IPSJ/ACM Award for Early Career Contributions to Global Research

Awarded for pioneering work in programming experience research for creativity support of both programmers and non-programmers.

March 17, 2021
ISID '21 Best Poster Award
April 12, 2018
IEEE PacificVis '18 Honorable Mention Poster Award
July 30, 2015
SMC '15 Best Paper
April 23, 2015
ACM CHI '15 Honorable Mention Award
October 31, 2014
HAI '14 Best Paper Nominee
June 17, 2013
ACM PLDI '13 Student Research Competition Finalist
April 27, 2013
ACM CHI '13 Honorable Mention Award
2010
ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals Finalist
August 2009
ACM SIGGRAPH '09 Laval Virtual Award (Best of Emerging Technologies)
April 2009
ACM CHI '09 Student Research Competition 1st Place

Publications

Selected Full Papers and Journal Articles

Jun Kato, Kenta Hara, Nao Hirasawa. 2024. Griffith: A Storyboarding Tool Designed with Japanese Animation Professionals. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24; acceptance rate: 26.4%). DOI: 10.1145/3613904.3642121.
Jun Kato, Masataka Goto. 2023. Lyric App Framework: A Web-based Framework for Developing Interactive Lyric-driven Musical Applications. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23; acceptance rate: 27.6%). DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3580931. 🌟ACM CHI '23 Honorable Mention Award
Jun Kato, Masa Ogata, Takahiro Inoue, Masataka Goto. 2018. Songle Sync: A Large-Scale Web-based Platform for Controlling Various Devices in Synchronization with Music. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (MM '18; acceptance rate: 27.5%; oral presentation: 8.5%), pp.1697-1705. DOI: 10.1145/3240508.3240619.
Jun Kato, Masataka Goto. 2017. F3.Js: A Parametric Design Tool for Physical Computing Devices for Both Interaction Designers and End-users. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '17; acceptance rate: 22%), pp.1099-1110. DOI: 10.1145/3064663.3064681.
Jun Kato, Takeo Igarashi, Masataka Goto. 2016. Programming with Examples to Develop Data-Intensive User Interfaces. IEEE Computer 49(7) (Special Issue on 21st User Interfaces; IF 1.115), pp.34-42. DOI: 10.1109/MC.2016.217.
Jun Kato, Tomoyasu Nakano, Masataka Goto. 2015. TextAlive: Integrated Design Environment for Kinetic Typography. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15; acceptance rate: 25%), pp.3403-3412. DOI: 10.1145/2702123.2702140. 🌟ACM CHI '15 Honorable Mention Award
Sebastian Burckhardt, Manuel Fahndrich, Peli de Halleux, Sean McDirmid, Michal Moskal, Nikolai Tillmann, Jun Kato. 2013. It's Alive! Continuous Feedback in UI Programming. In Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI '13; acceptance rate: 17%), pp.95-104. DOI: 10.1145/2491956.2462170.
Jun Kato, Daisuke Sakamoto, Takeo Igarashi. 2013. Picode: Inline Photos Representing Posture Data in Source Code. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13; acceptance rate: 20%), pp.3097-3100. DOI: 10.1145/2470654.2466422. 🌟ACM CHI '13 Honorable Mention Award
Jun Kato, Sean McDirmid, Xiang Cao. 2012. DejaVu: Integrated Support for Developing Interactive Camera-Based Programs. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual ACM symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '12; acceptance rate: 22%), pp.189-196. DOI: 10.1145/2380116.2380142.

Other Publications

2024
Hideki Todo, Yuki Koyama, Kunihiro Sakai, Akihiro Komiya, Jun Kato. 2024. A Practical Style Transfer Pipeline for 3D Animation: Insights from Production R&D. SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Technical Communications (SA '24). DOI: 10.1145/3681758.3698000. 🌟ACM SIGGRAPH Asia '24 Technical Communications Best Paper Award
Shuhei Tsuchida, Satoru Fukayama, Jun Kato, Hiromu Yakura, Masataka Goto. 2024. DanceUnisoner: A Parametric, Visual, and Interactive Simulation Interface for Choreographic Composition of Group Dance. IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems E107.D(3), pp.386-399. DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2023edp7063.
2023
Jun Kato. 2023. On the Relationship between HCI Researchers and Creators---Or How I Became a Toolsmith. XRDS 29(4), pp.26-31. DOI: 10.1145/3596927. 🌟Invited article
Jun Kato, Jonas Frich, Zhicong Lu, Jennifer Jacobs, Kumiyo Nakakoji, Celine Latulipe. 2023. Special Interest Group on Creativity and Cultures in Computing. Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '23). DOI: 10.1145/3544549.3583175.
2022
Chunqi Zhao, I-Chao Shen, Tsukasa Fukusato, Jun Kato, Takeo Igarashi. 2022. ODEN: Live Programming for Neural Network Architecture Editing. 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '22), pp.392-404. DOI: 10.1145/3490099.3511120.
2021
Yuka Ikarashi, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, Tsukasa Fukusato, Jun Kato, Takeo Igarashi. 2021. Guided Optimization for Image Processing Pipelines. In Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC '21). DOI: 10.1109/VL/HCC51201.2021.9576341. 🌟IEEE VL/HCC '21 Best Short Paper Award
2020
Shota Sakaguchi, Jun Kato, Masataka Goto, Seiichi Uchida (Eds. Xiang Bai, Dimosthenis Karatzas, Daniel Lopresti). 2020. Lyric Video Analysis Using Text Detection and Tracking. Document Analysis Systems (DAS '20), pp.426-440. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-57058-3_30.
Jun Kato, Keisuke Shimakage. 2020. Rethinking Programming "Environment": Technical and Social Environment Design toward Convivial Computing. In Companion Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Convivial Computing Salon '20), pp.95-103. DOI: 10.1145/3397537.3397544.
2018
Jun Kato, Masataka Goto. 2018. DeployGround: A Framework for Streamlined Programming from API playgrounds to Application Deployment. In Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC '18), pp.259-263. DOI: 10.1109/VLHCC.2018.8506562.
Ryo Suzuki, Jun Kato, Mark D. Gross, Tom Yeh. 2018. Reactile: Programming Swarm User Interfaces Through Direct Physical Manipulation. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18; acceptance rate: 25%), pp.199:1-199:13. DOI: 10.1145/3173574.3173773.
2017
Yuta Ojima, Tomoyasu Nakano, Satoru Fukayama, Jun Kato, Masataka Goto, Katsutoshi Itoyama, Kazuyoshi Yoshii. 2017. A Singing Instrument for Real-Time Vocal-Part Arrangement of Music and Audio Signals. In Proceedings of the 14th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC '17), pp.559-563.
Jun Kato, Masataka Goto. 2017. User-Generated Variables: Streamlined Interaction Design for Feature Requests and Implementations. Companion to the First International Conference on the Art, Science and Engineering of Programming (PX '17), pp.28:1-28:7. DOI: 10.1145/3079368.3079403.
Jordan B.L. Smith, Jun Kato, Satoru Fukayama, Graham Percival, Masataka Goto. 2017. The CrossSong Puzzle: Developing a Logic Puzzle for Musical Thinking. Journal of New Music Research, pp.1-16. DOI: 10.1080/09298215.2017.1303519.
2016
Jun Kato, Masataka Goto. 2016. Live Tuning: Expanding Live Programming Benefits to Non-Programmers. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Live Programming Systems (LIVE '16).
Tomoyasu Nakano, Jun Kato, Masahiro Hamasaki, Masataka Goto. 2016. PlaylistPlayer: An Interface Using Multiple Criteria to Change the Playback Order of a Music Playlist. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '16), pp.186-190. DOI: 10.1145/2856767.2856809.
2015
Jordan Smith, Graham Parcival, Jun Kato, Masataka Goto, Satoru Fukayama. 2015. CrossSong Puzzle: Generating and Unscrambling Music Mash-ups with Real-time Interactivity. In Proceedings of the 12nd Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC '15), pp.61-67. 🌟SMC '15 Best Paper Award
Jun Kato, Tomoyasu Nakano, Masataka Goto. 2015. TextAlive Online: Live Programming of Kinetic Typography Videos with Online Music. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC '15), pp.199-205. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19355.
2014
Jun Kato, Daisuke Sakamoto, Takeo Igarashi, Masataka Goto. 2014. Sharedo: To-do List Interface for Human-agent Task Sharing. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI '14), pp.345-351. DOI: 10.1145/2658861.2658894. 🌟HAI '14 Best Paper Nominee
Jun Kato, Takeo Igarashi. 2014. VisionSketch: Integrated Support for Example-centric Programming of Image Processing Applications. In Proceedings of the 2014 Graphics Interface Conference (GI '14), pp.115-122.
Koumei Fukahori, Daisuke Sakamoto, Jun Kato, Takeo Igarashi. 2014. CapStudio: An Interactive Screencast for Visual Application Development. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14), pp.1453-1458. DOI: 10.1145/2559206.2581138.
2013
Jun Kato, Takashi Nakashima, Hideki Takeoka, Kazunori Ogasawara, Kazuma Murao, Toshinari Shimokawa, Masaaki Sugimoto. 2013. OpenPool: Community-based Prototyping of Digitally-augmented Billiard Table. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Global Conference on Consumer Electronics (IEEE GCCE '13), pp.175-176. DOI: 10.1109/GCCE.2013.6664790.
2012
Jun Kato, Daisuke Sakamoto, Takeo Igarashi. 2012. Phybots: A Toolkit for Making Robotic Things. In Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '12; acceptance rate: 20%), pp.248-257. DOI: 10.1145/2317956.2317996.
2009
Jun Kato, Daisuke Sakamoto, Masahiko Inami, Takeo Igarashi. 2009. Multi-touch Interface for Controlling Multiple Mobile Robots. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '09), pp.3443-3448. DOI: 10.1145/1520340.1520500. 🌟ACM CHI '09 Student Research Competition 1st Place

*Non-archival publications and domestic (Japanese) publications are unlisted and can be found at https://junkato.jp/publications and /ja/publications.

Academic Services

Memberships

AIST Creative HCI Seminar/Workshop

Founder, organizer 2023-2024

Japan ACM SIGCHI Chapter

Treasurer 2022-, Board Member 2021-2022

Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE)

Steering Committee 2020-

Special Interest Group in Programming Experience (SIGPX)

Founder, organizer 2016-

Society for Animation Studies (SAS)

2020-

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

2009-

Conference/Workshop Organizers

2025
ACM CHI '25

Sponsorship Chair

2023
LIVE '23

Co-chair; held as part of ACM SPLASH '23

SIGCCC

Organizer; held as part of ACM CHI '23

2022
LIVE '22

Co-chair; held as part of ACM SPLASH '22

2018
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia '21

Real-Time Live! Chair

2021
ACM CHI '21

Student Research Competition Chair

2020
IEEE VL/HCC '20

Showpieces Co-chair

2018
Asian CHI Symposium: Emerging HCI Research Collection

Organizing Committee; held as part of ACM CHI '18

ACM IUI '18

Student Consortium Committee

2017
Asian CHI Symposium: Emerging HCI Research Collection

Organizing Committee; held as part of ACM CHI '17

IEEE/ACM HRI '17

Demo & Video Co-chair

2016
ACM ISS '16

Publicity Co-chair

ACM UIST '16

Student Volunteer Chair

Symposium on Emerging Japanese HCI Research Collection

Organizing Committee; held as part of ACM CHI '16

2015
Symposium on Emerging Japanese HCI Research Collection

Organizing Committee; held as part of ACM CHI '15

2013
ACM UIST '13

Publicity Co-chair

Conference/Workshop Program Committee Members

2024
SPLASH '24 Onward! Papers

Program Committee; held as part of ACM SPLASH '24

LIVE '24

Program Committee; held as part of ACM SPLASH '24

2023
ACM CHI '23

Associate Chair (Blending Interaction: Engineering Interactive Systems & Tools)

2021
ACM CHI '21

Associate Chair (Engineering Interactive Systems & Technologies)

2020
LIVE '20

Program Committee; held as part of ACM SPLASH '20

IEEE VL/HCC '20

Program Committee

ACM CHI '20

Associate Chair (Engineering Interactive Systems & Technologies)

2019
ACM UIST '19

Program Committee

PX/19

Program Committee; held as part of ‹Programming› '19

ACM IUI '19

Program Committee

2018
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia '18

Real-Time Live! Program Committee

LIVE '18

Program Committee; held as part of ACM SPLASH '18

ACM UIST '18

Program Committee

PX/18

Program Committee; held as part of ‹Programming› '18

‹Programming› '18

Program Committee

ACM IUI '18

Program Committee

2017
PX/17.2

Program Committee; held as part of ACM SPLASH '17

LIVE '17

Program Committee; held as part of ACM SPLASH '17

ACM UIST '17

Program Committee

PX/17

Program Committee; held as part of ‹Programming› '17

ACM CHI '17

Associate Chair (Engineering Interactive Systems & Technologies)

2016
PX/16

Program Committee; held as part of ECOOP '16

LIVE '16

Program Committee; held as part of ECOOP '16

2014
HAI '14

Program Committee

ACM UIST '14

Program Committee

*Minor reviewing activities are omitted and can be found at https://junkato.jp/activities.

References

Dr. Masataka Goto

Relationship: research director and colleague 2014-; National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Ibaraki, Japan
https://staff.aist.go.jp/m.goto

Dr. Takeo Igarashi

Relationship: academic supervisor 2008-2014; The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
https://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo

Dr. Jovan Popovic

Relationship: research intern supervisor 2013; Adobe Research Seattle, WA, US
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jovan-cmu/

Dr. Sebastian Burckhardt

Relationship: research intern supervisor 2012; Microsoft Research Redmond, WA, US
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/sburckha/

Dr. Xiang Cao

Relationship: research intern supervisor 2012; Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China
https://caoxiang.net

Dr. Sean McDirmid

Relationship: research intern supervisor 2012; Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-mcdirmid-52b0aa90