Activity Report of Open Application Program 2023 vol.20 (Course B)
Activity Report of Sakura Science Exchange Program
Report from Japan Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (JAIST)
The JST Sakura Science Program (SSP) invites talented young foreign human resources from around the world for short-term visits to Japan, giving them the opportunity to experience Japan's cutting-edge science, technology, and culture. Similar to last year, the laboratory of Associate Professor Sakriani Sakti, the Human-AI Communication, Co-Learning, and Collaborative Intelligence (HA3CI) Research Laboratory at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (JAIST), joins the program. Specifically for this year, HA3CI-Lab collaborates with other laboratories at JAIST, including the laboratory of Professor Masashi Unoki (https://www.jaist.ac.jp/~unoki/lab/jp/index.html) and Associate Professor Shogo Okada (https://www.jaist.ac.jp/~okada-s/index.html), as well as Assistant Professor Candy Mawalim. The aim of this program is to conduct JAIST-UI-ITB collaborative research activities on the development of artificial intelligence in spoken language processing that supports human-to-human and human-to-machine communication.
We invite ten students from the School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Indonesia, and the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Indonesia (UI), Indonesia. UI and ITB are well-known universities and are ranked among the top three universities in Indonesia. Several UI and ITB students applied to join the JST Sakura Science Program. Among the applicants, we selected the top students based on their curriculum vitae and transcripts. As a result, we invited one MSc student and five BSc students from ITB, and four BSc students from UI, totaling one MSc student and nine BSc students.
The original program was planned for January 5th to 25th. However, due to a major earthquake in the Ishikawa area, we rescheduled it to January 19th - February 8th, 2024. We will then continue with an online program from February 9th to March 15th, 2024.
Research Activities
The Indonesian students arrived at Komatsu Airport on the afternoon of January 19th. We picked them up at the airport and brought them directly to JAIST. Upon arriving at JAIST on January 19th, 2024, they attended several orientations about JAIST and daily life in Japan, as well as sessions on how to use computing servers and understand security policies for research purposes, such as the "JAIST Cyber Security Online Orientation for Newcomers." After that, they met all the faculty members who would supervise them during the program, including Professor Masashi Unoki, Associate Professor Sakriani Sakti, Associate Professor Shogo Okada, and Assistant Professor Candy Mawalim. In the evening, we guided them to their accommodation, which was very close to JAIST.
On the next day, the students learned about JAIST and the laboratory research environment, including how to use the GPU machines for research. Then, we had the first research meeting to discuss each student's research topic related to artificial intelligence in spoken language processing. The topics varied from sound anomaly detection, privacy protection, automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, speech translation, and multimodal interaction modeling. During this research study, each student had their own workspace complete with a monitor, keyboard, and Surface notebook.
As most of the participants are BSc students, they don't have any experience in performing scientific research. Here, in the JST Sakura Science program, the students could learn how to conduct research on the development of artificial intelligence in spoken language processing, starting from developing the baseline and the proposed approach to presenting their research results. The target for the first half of the program (January 22nd-26th) was to develop the baseline systems, and the aim for the second half of the program (January 29th-February 2nd) was to implement the novel proposed systems.
Each week, we had two types of meetings. The first was the individual progress reports, where the meeting was held individually with each student and all faculty members. This was done to discuss progress and find solutions if there were any problems. The second was the group research meeting (all students together), where the students shared their results with the group. Besides these meetings, we let students perform research at their desks, but of course, they were allowed to consult with any faculty members anytime or ask questions via email or Slack if they had questions or problems. All students were very enthusiastic about conducting research at JAIST.
On February 5th, we held the JAIST-UI-ITB Science Hub Symposium. The aim was to form a science hub for full-fledged collaborative research between researchers and academia at JAIST, UI, and ITB. During this event, Dr. Dessi Puji Lestari, the Head of the Graphics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), came to Japan and attended the meeting. Dr. Ayu Purwarianti, Associate Professor and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Center, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), and Dr. Kurniawati Azizah, S.T., Lecturer, Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia (UI), were unable to come but joined the meeting online.
At this event, all students of the Sakura Science Program presented the research results they had achieved during their stay at JAIST. Although they only had a very short period to perform research work, they worked very hard and accomplished some good results. The symposium ended with a ceremony where each student was awarded a Sakura Science Program certificate.
Cultural Learning Activities
After completing the target for the first half of the program, the Indonesian students and faculty members had a chance to learn about traditional Japanese culture and history on January 28th. We visited the Samurai District, Kanazawa Castle, Kenrokuen, and the Higashi Chaya District. Kanazawa Castle was the headquarters of the Kaga Domain, ruled by the Maeda clan until the Meiji Restoration in 1871.
After completing the program, they also had a chance to visit the Miraikan - The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, one of Japan's most significant science museums. It is more than just a place for gaining knowledge of the latest science and technology; it’s also a platform for people to create a better future together. We visited the museum on February 7th before they returned to Indonesia on February 8th.
Closing Remarks
Although 20 days were a short time for performing research work, given that most students didn't have any prior experience, they still succeeded in completing the baseline and their proposed systems, which were very satisfactory. After this, they will continue their work in Indonesia, and we will maintain weekly online meetings until March 15th, 2024.
Overall, it was an excellent program for both the Japanese and Indonesian sides to engage in collaborative research activities. Various discussions during their stay may also lead to further deepened collaboration between universities. Therefore, we would like to express our gratitude to the JST Sakura Science Program for providing us with this invaluable opportunity. We hope to have other opportunities to join the JST Sakura Science Program in the future.