Hirotsugu Seike

News

06/11/2025
An oral presentation titled "Advancing Collaboration: UTokyo International Testbed of Dataspace Technology" at Korea Industry 4.0 Association 10th Anniversary, 5th Industry 4.0 and Industrial AX International Conference, SMATEC 2025. NEW
04/11/2025
Our paper "Quantitative Analysis of Blockchain Consensus Effects on Dataspace Transaction Latency" has been accepted at IEEE BigData 2025 4th Special Session on Dataspaces and DFFT (Data Free Flow with Trust).
10/17/2025
An oral presentation titled "Current Status and Future Directions of the UTokyo International Testbed for Dataspace Technology" at Data Spaces Discovery Day Tokyo 2025.
03/07/2025
An oral presentation titled "Domestic and International Trends of Data Spaces" at Data Management 2025.
11/12/2024
An oral presentation titled "Current Status of UTokyo ITDT" at IDSA Network Meet-up, Vienna
10/09/2024
An oral presentation titled "Current Status and Future Directions of the UTokyo International Testbed for Dataspace Technology" at Data Spaces Discovery Day Tokyo 2024.
05/31/2024
Our paper "A statistical method for detecting Bitcoin mining resource changes considering difficulty adjustments" has been accepted at IEEE COINS 2024.
09/03/2023
An oral presentation titled "A Study on the Sustainability of Blockchain Systems - A Case Study of Bitcoin Mining Pools -" at Japanese Joint Statistical Meeting in 2023.
03/30/2023
Our paper "Evaluating Off-chain Transaction Queueing Delay to Ensure Data Integrity by Blockchain" has been accepted at IEEE ICCCBDA 2023.

About

I'm an Assistant Professor of Koshizuka-Lab, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo. My research focuses on analyzing the theoretical performance of blockchain-based systems and proposing methods to scale blockchains. Blockchain is one of the distributed ledger technologies and the concept has been well known to the public by Satoshi Nakamoto who invented Bitcoin in 2008. However, a blockchain-based system without a centralized authority must face several scalability limitations to maintain secure, consistent databases across multiple nodes. To solve this problem, I'm studying blockchain-releated technologies, such as off-chain technologies and consensus algorithms.

  I'm also a member of Data Society Alliance (DSA). I'm involved in research and development activities related to Dataspaces proposed by Franklin et al. in 2005, to realize a global, federated data sharing platform. In particular, I focus on trust-related technologies (e.g., quasi-isomorphic cryptography, Watch Tower), which are used in the blockchain ecosystem to guarantee the integrity of data transaction records.

  I participate in the project of Consortium for training experts in statistical sciences that is promoted mainly by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) in Japan.

Brief Biography

2023/10~
I'm an Assistant Professor at Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.
2024/01~
I'm an individual member of Data Society Alliance (DSA).
2025/06~
Visiting Assistant Professor, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics
2023/04
~2025/03
I'm a 2nd stage trainee of the project of Consortium for training experts in statistical sciences.
2023/04
~2023/07
I'm a research associate at Graduate School of Social Data Science, Hitotsubashi University.
2023/01
I received the Ph.D. degree in Interdisciplinary Information Studies from Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.
2022/05
~2023/09
I'm a Visiting Researcher at Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.
2022/04
~2023/03
I'm a research associate at Center for the Promotion of Social Data Science Education and Research, Hitotsubashi University.
2022/03
I withdrew from the doctorial course of Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.
2018/04
I was a Ph.D. student at Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo, under the supervision of Noboru Koshizuka.
2018/03
I received the M.S. degree in Interdisciplinary Information Studies from Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.
2016/03
I received the B.S. degree in Information and Computer Science from Keio University.

Research Interests

Consensus System

My research focuses on distributed systems based on the CAP theorem, examining the trade-offs among consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. Specifically, I study consensus algorithms such as Paxos, PBFT, PoW, and PoS, as well as supporting mechanisms including hash functions, digital signatures, Rollup technologies represented by Arbitrum, and cryptographic techniques such as zk-SNARKs that prove the correctness of computations without revealing their intermediate processes. Through the integrated analysis of these technologies, I aim to design distributed consensus infrastructures that achieve both reliability and scalability.

Verifiable AI

I conduct research on mechanisms that enable third parties to reproduce and verify the outputs and decision-making processes of AI systems. This includes designing methods to validate the behavior, reasoning, and data integrity of AI agents, while extending the concepts of Explainable AI and Auditable AI. By integrating these approaches with distributed infrastructures such as blockchains and dataspaces, my research aims to enhance the transparency, reliability, and reproducibility of AI.

Trusted Data Sharing and Governance Mechanism

I conduct research on mechanisms that ensure trustworthiness and accountability in data sharing and utilization. Building upon Usage Control and Access Control, my work integrates cryptographic technologies, hardware-based trust foundations such as Trusted Platform Modules (TPM), and quantum entanglement–based verification of data-opening procedures to establish governance mechanisms that enable auditability and verifiability throughout the entire data lifecycle—from generation to utilization.

Mathematical Modeling

I develop formal models to describe and analyze the behavior of consensus systems, verifiable AI, and data governance mechanisms in terms of reliability, performance, and scalability. Through mathematical modeling, my research seeks to clarify the theoretical design principles underlying distributed systems and dataspaces.