TSAC-JSAC

Selim Aksoy received the B.S. degree from Middle East Technical University in 1996, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1998 and 2001, respectively. During 2001-2003, he was a Research Scientist at Insightful Corporation in Seattle. He joined the Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara in 2004 where he is currently a Professor and the Department Chair. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington in 2013. His research interests include computer vision, pattern recognition, and machine learning with applications to medical imaging and remote sensing. He received the Research Incentive Award from the Parlar Foundation in 2016, the Distinguished Young Scientist Award from the Science Academy in 2016, the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences in 2015, the Distinguished Teaching Award from Bilkent University in 2014, a Fulbright Scholarship in 2013, a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission in 2005, the CAREER Award from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) in 2004, and a NATO Science Fellowship in 1996.

Teruo Higashino graduated from Osaka University, Japan and earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1984. Since 2002 to 2021, he had led the Mobile Computing Laboratory at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University. In 2021, he transferred to Kyoto Tachibana University, where he assumed the position of Professor in the Faculty of Engineering. He also serves as Vice President (2022-2025) and Dean of the Graduate School of Informatics (2025-date). Our laboratory conducts research on algorithms, software, and design methodologies related to mobile/ubiquitous computing systems. Specifically, our focus includes pedestrian and crowd positioning and behavior estimation, context awareness, ITS, IT technologies for disaster mitigation, and cyber-physical systems (CPS) for building future smart and connected communities (S&CC). He has served as a member of the Science Council of Japan, Vice President of the Information Processing Society of Japan, and Research Supervisor of the JST PRESTO Program.

Prof. Dr. Michihiko Minoh is a distinguished researcher specializing in Image Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Information Processing with over four decades of experience in advanced technology research. Currently serving as Project Director of the Guardian Robot Project at RIKEN and Professor/Vice President at The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics, Prof. Minoh holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Kyoto University (1983) and is Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University.

His research has resulted in numerous publications in leading international venues, including IEEE Access and the Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, with a particular focus on autonomous mobile robots and human-robot interaction. Prof. Minoh has held significant leadership positions, including Director of RIKEN's Information and Strategy Headquarters (2022-2024) and Executive Director of RIKEN (2018-2022). He has also served as Director-General of Kyoto University's Institute for Information Management and Communication.

Beyond his research contributions, Prof. Minoh is an active member of the international scientific community, holding Life Membership in IEEE and membership in ACM, as well as Associate Membership in Japan's Science Council. He has received numerous accolades, including the Engineering Education Awards from the Japan Society of Engineering Education (2002). His expertise spans educational technology and information society theory, and he continues to contribute significantly to advancing robotics and AI research on the global stage.

Aysegul Askan is a professor of civil engineering, earthquake studies and applied mathematics at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006 with her thesis focusing on full waveform inversion for seismic velocity structures. Dr. Askan’s field of expertise includes engineering seismology, earthquake engineering, scientific computing and numerical methods, effects of simulated ground motions on structures, multi-scale seismic risk and loss estimations in urban regions, structural reliability and parameter estimation problems for site characterization. She holds several administrative positions in education and research. She is the department head of Earthquake Studies program at METU. She is the current general secretary of Earthquake Engineering Association of Turkey and a member of the National Disaster and Emergency Consultancy Board of Turkey. She is a board member COSMOS and vice-president of European Seismological Commission. Dr. Askan has led and participated in several EU projects, Turkish-Japanese bilateral projects and national projects focusing on seismic hazard and risk problems. She has supervised more than 35 graduate students at METU since 2007. The list of publications by Dr. Askan includes 79 peer-reviewed international journal articles and 3 book chapters with an h-index of 29.

Specializing in Structural and Earthquake Engineering, Prof. Dr. Alper İlki has been working at Istanbul Technical University since 1993 (currently, as the Head of Civil Engineering Department). He is the author of 110+ articles published in Web of Science-indexed journals and 250+ full-text international conference papers. He has been involved in many research and application projects on Structural and Earthquake engineering focusing on Disaster Mitigation. Currently, he is the editor, associate editor and subject editor for Turkish Journal of Civil Engineering, ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE Journal of Composites for Construction and some other scientific journals. Other than delivering keynote and invited lectures in different parts of the world, he has been the chair/or co-chair of several highly reputable international conferences, including SMAR series, CICE 2020/2021, fib Symposium 2023 and 8th, 9th and 10th Turkish Conferences on Earthquake Engineering (in 2015, 2021 and 2025). Alper İlki, who is the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Turkish Earthquake Foundation and a member of the Executive Board of the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool, has served for the drafting of Turkish Seismic Design Code, Regulation on Assessment of Risky Buildings, Post-Earthquake Damage Assessment Code, and Turkish Seismic Retrofit Code. Professor İlki has also been actively taking part in structural damage assessment process after disasters (particularly earthquakes) since almost thirty years.

Prof. Dr. Hayrullah Karabulut received his B.Sc. degree in Geophysical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 1986. He subsequently earned an M.Sc. degree in Geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines in 1992 and a Ph.D. degree in Geophysics from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1996. His expertise encompasses engineering and earthquake seismology, seismotectonics, the behavior of active faults, the structure and imaging of the Earth's crust and upper mantle.

Since 1997, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Geophysics at the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, Boğaziçi University. He has participated in numerous national and international research projects aimed at advancing the understanding of the seismotectonic evolution of the Anatolian, Aegean, Mediterranean, and Caucasus regions. His research focuses on the structure and evolution of the North Anatolian Fault and the Marmara Sea region, seismic imaging of the lithosphere and upper mantle beneath Anatolia, the development of high-resolution earthquake catalogs, and the investigation of earthquake processes.

Prof. Dr. Karabulut teaches graduate-level courses in earthquake seismology, seismic wave theory, inverse methods in geophysics, signal processing, seismic tomography, earthquake source physics, and numerical methods in geophysics. Through his teaching and research activities, he has contributed significantly to the education and training of graduate students and researchers in the field of Earth sciences.

Koichi Kusunoki is a Professor and vice-director of the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI), the University of Tokyo. He had also served as the Secretary-General of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering since 2014. He obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Tokyo in 1997. His research subjects are 1) Structural Behavior of Reinforced Concrete, 2) Structural Health Monitoring, 3) Seismic Design, and 4) Field investigation in the earthquake-affected area. He manages the building monitoring system at ERI, which monitors approximately 40 buildings in Japan, El Salvador, Peru, New Zealand, and Turkey. He got awards such as the “Excellence Award of Technical Design Competition of Architectural Institute of Japan” (Architectural Institute of Japan, AIJ), “Encouraging Prize” (AIJ), “Encouraging Prize” (Japan Concrete Institute), and AIJ Prize.

A new but old problem in the practical structural design, the current discussion on Soft-First-Story failure in Japan.

Hiroaki Yamanaka received a B. Eng. from Waseda University in 1983, and a Dr. Eng. from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1989. He was a research fellow at Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of Southern California from 1989 to 1990. He worked as a research engineer in strong motion seismology for Kajima Corporation from 1991 to 1995. He was an associate professor in 1995-2011 and a professor from 2011 to 2024 at Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. He has been a professor since October, 2024 at Department of Architecture and Building Engineering, School of Environment and Society, Institute of Science Tokyo. His current research interests are engineering seismology including geophysical exploration, strong ground motion observation, seismic microzonation, and earthquake ground motion simulation. He was the president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists of Japan in 2017-2018. He is the president of Japan Association for Earthquake Engineering in 2025-2026.