[English / Japanese]
Professor at Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University
Email: shirakawa-shinichi-bg 
ynu.ac.jp
Education / Degree
- Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Yokohama National University (April 2001 - March 2005)
- Bachelor of Engineering (March 2005)
- Master Course, Department of Information Media and Environment Sciences, Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University (April 2005 - March 2007)
- Master of Engineering (March 2007)
- Doctor Course, Department of Information Media and Environment Sciences, Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University (April 2007 - March 2009)
- Ph.D. degree in Engineering (March 2009)
Professional Career
- Research Fellow (DC2) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (April 2008 - March 2009)
- Research Fellow (PD) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (April 2009 - March 2010)
- Researcher at Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. (April 2010 - March 2012)
- Research Associate at Department of Integrated Information Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University (April 2012 - March 2013)
- Assistant Professor at Department of Integrated Information Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University (April 2013 - March 2015)
- Assistant Professor at Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba (April 2015 - March 2016)
- Lecturer at Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University (April 2016 - March 2021)
- Visiting Researcher at RIKEN AIP-FUJITSU Collaboration Center, RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, RIKEN (October 2020 - March 2022)
- Associate Professor at Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University (April 2021 - March 2024)
- Principal Investigator at Artificial Intelligence Research Unit for Innovation and Co-Creation, Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences (IMS), Yokohama National University (April 2023 - Present)
- Visiting Associate Professor at Yokohama City University (April 2023 - Present)
- Professor at Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University (April 2024 - Present)
- Invited Professor at Open Collaboration Laboratory for Enabling Advanced Marine Systems, The University of Osaka (May 2025 - Present)
Publications
Awards
- EvoIASP 2009 Best Paper Nomination (April 2009)
- Winner in Yellow Submarine Challenge of EvoSTOC 2009 Competition (April 2009)
- IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Japan Chapter Young Researcher Award (December 2009)
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2017 Best Paper Award of EML Track (July 2017) [Link]
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2022 Best Paper Nomination of ENUM Track (July 2022) [Link]
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2025 Best Paper Nomination of ENUM Track (July 2025) [Link]
- 26th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization (EvoCOP 2026) Best Paper Nomination (April 2026) [Link]
Awards for Students and Co-Authors
- IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Japan Chapter Young Researcher Award (Kazuki Ouchi) (December 2014)
- IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Japan Chapter Young Researcher Award (Ryoki Hamano) (December 2021)
- IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Japan Chapter Young Researcher Award (Kento Uchida) (December 2023)
- EvoStar 2026 Outstanding Students of 2026 (Yutaro Yamada) (April 2026) [Link]
Talks, Tutorials, etc.
- Presentation at Genetic Programming Theory and Practice Workshop (GPTP 2009): Graph Structured Program Evolution: Evolution of Loop Structures (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, May 14-16, 2009)
- Invited Talk at Asia Pacific Society for Computing and Information Technology (APSCIT) 2017 Annual Meeting: Evolutionary Computation Approaches to Designing Deep Neural Network Architectures (Hokkaido, Japan, July 29, 2017)
- Tutorial at IEEE World Conference on Computational Intelligence 2018 (WCCI 2018): Machine Learning on Evolutionary Computation (organized with Masaya Nakata, Frederic Chazal, and Naoki Hamada) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 8, 2018)
- Lecture at Lviv Data Science Summer School 2018: Hyper-parameter optimization and model selection in machine learning (Lviv, Ukraine, July 26-27, 2018)
- Public Talk at Lviv Data Science Summer School 2018: Recent Trend of Neural Network Architecture Search (Lviv, Ukraine, July 28, 2018)
- Invited Talk at 2018 JPNSEC International Workshop on Evolutionary Computation: Designing Deep Neural Network Structures Based on Evolutionary Computation (Shenzhen, China, September 1, 2018)
- Tutorial at 2019 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2019): Evolutionary Machine Learning (organized with Masaya Nakata and Will Browne) (Wellington, New Zealand, June 10, 2019)
- Tutorial at IEEE World Conference on Computational Intelligence 2020 (WCCI 2020): Evolutionary Machine Learning (organized with Masaya Nakata and Will Browne) (Online, July 19, 2020)
- Tutorial at 2021 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2021): Evolutionary Machine Learning (organized with Masaya Nakata and Will Browne) (Online, June 28, 2021)
- Keynote Speech at 1st International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Systems and Informatics (ICETISI 2025): Toward Next Generation Automated Machine Learning (Jakarta, Indonesia, December 2, 2025)
Professional Activities
[Editor]
- New Generation Computing, Editorial Board (January 2020 - December 2024), Area Editor (January 2025-)
- Neural Networks, Action Editor (January 2024-)
- ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, Associate Editor（February 2026-）
[Organizing Committee]
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2018, Electronic Media Chair
[Conference Program Committee & Reviewer]
- AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Reviewer (2019-2026)
- International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Reviewer (2020, 2022-2024, 2026), Senior Program Committee (2021)
- European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI), Senior Program Committee (2020), Meta Reviewer (2023), Senior Programme Committee (2024-2025)
- Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Reviewer (2020-2023), Area Chair (2024-2025), Top Reviewer (2022)
- International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Reviewer (2020-2024), Area Chair (2025-2026) Outstanding Reviewer (Top 10%) (2022)
- International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Reviewer (2022-2026)
- European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD), Journal Track Reviewer (2021-2025)
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), Reviewer (2018-2026)
- Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN), Reviewer (2018, 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026)
- IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), Reviewer (2010-2024)
- IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Reviewer (2024-2025)
- etc.
[Reviewer for Journals]
- IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
- IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
- ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization
- Transactions on Machine Learning Research
- Neural Networks
- Swarm and Evolutionary Computation
- etc.
Research Interest
- Evolutionary Computation
- Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Pattern Recognition / Data Mining
- Image Processing / Image Recognition / Computer Vision