YOKOTA Laboratory

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Biography

Rio Yokota is a Professor at the Supercomputing Research Center, Institute of Integrated Research, Institute of Science Tokyo. He also leads the AI for Science Foundation Model Research Team at RIKEN Center for Computational Science. His research interests lie at the intersection of high performance computing, machine learning, and linear algebra. He has been optimizing algorithms on GPUs since 2007, and was part of a team that received the Gordon Bell prize in 2009 using the first GPU supercomputer. More recently, he has been leading distributed training efforts on Japanese supercomputers such as ABCI, TSUBAME, and Fugaku. He is the co-developer of the Japanese LLM Swallow, and LLM-jp. He is also involved in the organization of multinational collaborations such as ADAC and TPC.

Education

Mar 2003 B.S., Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University
Mar 2005 M.S., Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University
Mar 2009 Withdrew from the doctoral program after completing coursework, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University
Jul 2009 Ph.D. in Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University

 

Research Experience

Feb 2009–Aug 2010 Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Mathematics, University of Bristol
Sep 2010–Aug 2011 Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University
Sep 2011–Mar 2015 Research Scientist, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Apr 2015–Dec 2022 Associate Professor, Global Scientific Information and Computing Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Jan 2023–Sep 2024 Professor, Global Scientific Information and Computing Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Apr 2024–present Scientific Director, Large Language Model Research and Development Center, National Institute of Informatics
Oct 2024–present Professor, Supercomputing Research Center, Institute of Integrated Research, Institute of Science Tokyo
Apr 2025–present Team Principal, AI for Science Foundation Model Research Team, AI for Science Platform Department, RIKEN Center for Computational Science

 

Awards

November 2009 ACM Gordon Bell Prize (price/performance)

 

Media Coverage

July 20, 2023 Nikkei xTECH (online) “Japan-specific LLMs Are Absolutely Necessary”: A Supercomputer Researcher Pursues Open AI Models
June 7, 2023 Nikkei (The Nikkei) (morning edition, page 2) Alarm over Japan Falling Behind in Domestic Generative AI
June 3, 2023 Yomiuri Shimbun (morning edition, page 10) Growing Participation in Japanese Homegrown Generative AI
June 2, 2023 Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun (page 7) Tokyo Tech and Others to Develop Domestic Generative AI
May 23, 2023 Nikkei (The Nikkei) (morning edition, page 1) Japanese Homegrown Generative AI on Fugaku
May 23, 2023 Nikkei (The Nikkei) (morning edition, page 14) Pioneering Text-Generating AI with a Domestic Model
May 23, 2023 Asahi Shimbun (morning edition, page 27) Toward the Development of a Japanese Homegrown Conversational AI: Tokyo Tech, RIKEN, and Others
May 23, 2023 Yomiuri Shimbun (morning edition, page 29) Japanese-Language AI Development Begins This Month
May 23, 2023 Mainichi Shimbun (morning edition, page 18) Toward Developing Domestic Generative AI Technology Using Fugaku
May 23, 2023 Sankei Shimbun (morning edition, page 2) Domestic Generative AI on Fugaku
May 23, 2023 Tokyo Shimbun (morning edition, page 2) Toward Developing Domestic Generative AI on the Fugaku Supercomputer
May 23, 2023 Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun (morning edition, page 23) Developing an LLM on Fugaku
May 22, 2023 Yomiuri Shimbun (evening edition, page 10) Developing Japanese-Language AI on Fugaku

 

Committee Memberships

2025 publicity chair — International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT 2025)
2025 proceedings vice-chair, program committee, AI4S committee — The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2025)
2025 reviewer — Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025)
2025 track co-chair — IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (IEEE CLUSTER 2025)
2025 reviewer — International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025)
2025 program committee — ISC High Performance (ISC 2025)
2025 domain co-chair — Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC 2025)
2025 program committee, best OSS judge — 39th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, (IPDPS 2025)
2024 The IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR 2024), reviewer —
2024 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024), reviewer —
2024 The 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), reviewer —
2024 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2024), poster, ML track, AI4S/TPC WS, LLMs for HPC BoF —
2024 International Conference on Preconditioning Techniques for Scientific and Industrial Applications, (Precond 2024), program committee —
2024 38th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, (IPDPS 2024), track co-chair —
2024 ISC High Performance (ISC 2024), posters chair —
2024 The 30th International Conference on Parallel Processing (Euro-Par 2024), program committee —
2024 ACM International Symposium on High-Performance, Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC 2024), program committee —
2024 SC Asia (SCA 2024), program committee —
2024 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC 2024), program committee —
2024 SIAM Conference on Linear Algebra (LA24), scientific committee —
2023 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE23), poster judge —
2023 10th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM 2023), program committee —
2023 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (IEEE CLUSTER 2023), publicity chair —
2023 Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP 2023), publicity chair —
2023 37th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, (IPDPS 2023), program committee —
2023 ISC High Performance (ISC 2023), posters deputy chair —
2023 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC 2023), mini symposia and posters committee, program committee —
2023 The 23rd IEEE/ACM international Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid 2023), program committee —
2023 The IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR 2023), reviewer —
2023 The 32nd International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT 2023), publicity chair Asia —
2023 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2023), posters, workshops, ML tech paper, panelist, best paper —
2023 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), reviewer —
2023 The Eleventh International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2023), reviewer —
2022 European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2022), reviewer —
2022 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2022), program committee, workshop chair —
2022 49th International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP 2022), program committee —
2022 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2022), program committee —
2022 ISC High Performance (ISC 2022), poster committee —
2022 The 36th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2022), program committee —
2022 International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region (HPC Asia 2022), Applications track co-chair —
2021 IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing (SBAC-PAD 2021), program committee —
2021 48th International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP 2021), program committee —
2021 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2021), program committee —
2021 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2021), program committee —
2021 ISC High Performance (ISC 2021), program committee, best paper committee, steering committee —
2021 The 35th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2021), program committee —
2021 International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region (HPC Asia 2021), organizing committee —
2021 SIAM Computational Science and Engineering (SIAM CSE 2021), organizing committee —
2020 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2020), ML track Chair —
2020 The 26th International Conference on Parallel Processing (Euro-Par 2020), program committee —
2020 SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing (SIAM PP 2020), program committee —
2020 International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region (HPC Asia 2020), program committee —
2019 The 3rd cross-disciplinary Workshop on Computing Systems, Infrastructures, and Programming (xSIG 2019), program committee —
2019 IEEE 13th International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Many-core Systems-on-Chip (MCSoC 2019), ATMG Track Chair —
2019 48th International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP 2019), Applications track chair, Workshop co-organizer —
2019 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2019), program committee —
2019 ISC High Performance (ISC 2019), program committee —
2019 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2019), program committee —
2019 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference (PASC 2019), program committee —
2019 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (SIAM CSE 2019), organizing committee —
2018 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2018), proceedings chair —
2018 ISC High Performance (ISC 2018), proceedings chair —
2018 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2018), program committee —
2018 The 32nd IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2018), program committee —
2018 18th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid 2018), program committee —
2018 SC Asia (SCA 2018), program committee —
2018 SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing (SIAM PP 2018), organizing committee —
2017 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2017), program committee —
2017 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference (PASC 2017), program committee —
2017 The 31st IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2017), program committee —
2017 International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS 2017), program committee —
2017 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2017), program committee —
2017 The 23rd International Conference on Parallel Processing (Euro-Par 2017), program committee —
2016 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2016), program committee —
2016 Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference (PASC 2016), program committee —
2016 ISC High Performance (ISC 2016), program committee —
2016 The 30th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2016), program committee —
2016 The 23rd annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HiPC 2016), program committee —
2016 16th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid 2016), program committee —
2016 International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS 2016), program committee —
2016 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2016), program committee —
2016 28th International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing (SBAC-PAD 2016), program committee —
2015 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2015), program committee —
2015 The 22nd annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HiPC 2015), program committee —
2015 15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid 2015), program committee —
2015 IEEE CLUSTER (IEEE CLUSTER 2015), program committee —
2014 The 20th International Conference on Parallel Processing (Euro-Par 2014), program committee —
2014 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2014), program committee —
2014 The International Meeting on High-Performance Computing for Computational Science (VECPAR 2014), program committee —
2014 The annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2014), program committee —
2014 14th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid 2014), program committee —
2013 The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC 2013), program committee —
2013 The 28th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2013), program committee —
2013 18th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP 2013), program committee —
2013 The annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2013), program committee —
2013 15th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric Algorithms for Scientific Computing (SYNASC 2013), program committee —
2012 The 12th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC 2012), program committee —
2012 The Third International Workshop on Frontier of GPU Computing, program committee —

 

Research Projects

2026–2030 Realization of a next-generation high-performance linear solver to pioneer the future of computational science and engineering(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2026–2029 High-performance urban model computing(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2025–2030 Creation of GPU educational materials and implementation of educational programs, and promotion of advanced utilization of GPU computing resources centered on generative AI technologies(MEXT Next-Generation HPC and AI Development Support Hub Program, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology)
2025–2028 Modernization of scientific and technical software to unlock the potential of next-generation computers(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2024–2030 Red-teaming platform for large language model misalignment(JST K Program, Japan Science and Technology Agency)
2024–2029 Research on distributed parallel pre-training of large language models(JST Program for Forming Research and Development Centers for Next-Generation AI Technologies, Japan Science and Technology Agency)
2024–2028 Building AI foundation models under limited resources through continual pre-training using synthetic data and small amounts of real data(Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research (Fostering Joint International Research), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2024–2027 Expanding the applicability of low-rank structured matrix methods and leveraging diverse computing architectures(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2024–2027 Research toward establishing an outcome-extraction methodology for evaluating the efficacy and safety of pharmaceuticals using Large Language Models (LLM)(MHLW Health Labour Sciences Research Grant (Applied Research), Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare)
2023–2026 Compositional pattern recognition and understanding using deep generative models(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2022–2026 Functional improvement of mixing promotion in fluid equipment by elucidating the universal statistical law of two-phase turbulence(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2022–2025 Fast and accurate eigenvalue calculations by hierarchical low-rank approximation and its application to large-scale electronic structure calculations(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2021–2027 Adaptive, robust, and continual artificial intelligence systems based on the Bayes duality principle(CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency)
2021–2024 Construction of numerical linear algebra based on lattice H-matrices and its high-performance implementation on modern architectures(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2020–2023 Application of unconventional linear algebra techniques to continual learning in supergiant neural networks(Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Pioneering), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2020–2023 Life-Long Deep Learning using Bayesian Principles(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2018–2021 Linear solvers for machine learning hardware(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2017–2020 Enhancement of an H-matrix library and optimization for next-generation supercomputers(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2016–2022 Acceleration and economization of deep learning algorithms for image processing in social infrastructure(CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency)
2016–2019 Hierarchical particle-method framework for exascale computers balancing performance and productivity(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2016–2018 Large-scale iterative solvers combining the FMM and H-matrices(Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
2015–2016 Algebraic extension of the FMM as a preconditioner for exascalable large-scale linear systems(Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)

 

Academic Societies

Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, Japan Society for Computational Engineering and Science, Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)