国際プロジェクト実習　【カナダ】
The University of Alberta
Teruaki Hayashi　[D3]
(Graduate School of Engineering, Department of Systems Innovation)

During the joint research program in this International Project, I visited the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada.
The purpose of my joint research was to develop the data visualization techniques to support human decision makers to derive value from the combination of data from different domains. Those techniques are part of my doctoral thesis; the structures of data utilization knowledge and the development of retrieval systems for supporting human decision makers.
In the Department of Computing Science of the University of Alberta, I had the pleasure to be supervised by Professor Randy Goebel, principle investigator in the Alberta Innovates Centre for Machine Learning (AICML). His background interests are abduction, hypothetical reasoning and belief revision, and his recent research is focused on the formalization of visualization, with applications in web mining. Moreover, the teammates of the laboratory are familiar with Natural Language Processing, data visualization, and machine learning. I enjoyed the discussion with them. The compatibility of the fields of research allowed this joint research to be quite productive and personally pleasant experience.
At the end of my internship, I conducted a workshop using the visualization method created in the joint research with the students of Department of Computing Science. In addition, I attended the AI seminars, which are held every Friday, and learned the latest technologies and basic principles of AI through lectures and discussions.
Besides research activities in Canada, I could attend and had a presentation about my recent research in a workshop of the Market of Data (MoDAT) in International Conference on Data Mining held in Atlantic City, US.
This was my first time to live by myself in a foreign country, and of course there were some difficulties. Since the restaurants in Canada close earlier than in Japan, when I stayed late in the laboratory, I sometimes missed my dinner. When you stay abroad in the International Project, I advise you to choose the accommodation where can cook by yourself. And at first, I had some difficulties to get used to the life style and research environment in Canada. I advise you to have a good communication with supervisor, for those who are planning to prepare the International Project in the future.
In conclusion, I would like to say that I really enjoyed my research activities in Canada. I appreciate Professor Randy Goebel to accept me to be part of his research team. Moreover, I wish to express my deep gratitude to Professor Yukio Ohsawa who introduced Professor Goebel to me, and allow me to visit Canada.