Keynote Speakers

Makoto Usami is Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at Kyoto University and a visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich. Previously a visiting scholar at Harvard University, he held full professorships at Chukyo University and the Tokyo Institute of Technology (now Institute of Science Tokyo). Usami has served as President of the Public Policy Studies Association, Japan (PPSAJ), President of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Japan (IVR Japan), and as a Director for both the Japanese Association of Legal Philosophy (JALP) and the Japanese Law and Economics Association (JLEA). Specializing in legal and political philosophy, his recent research focuses on climate, energy, and global justice, alongside the ethics of artificial intelligence. He has authored six books and edited nine anthologies as well as two special issues of an international journal. He has also published over 80 journal papers and book chapters, delivering lectures and presentations at more than 80 international conferences.

 

Kazuhisa Takemura is a Japanese behavioral decision theorist. Besides serving as a　professor at the Department of Psychology, Waseda University, he is also the director of the University’s Center for Decision Research. He received his PhD (System Science) from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1994, and an additional PhD (Medical Science) from Kitasato University in 2013. He has also worked abroad as a Fulbright Senior Researcher at the Department of Social and Decision Science, Carnegie Mellon University (USA) from 1999 to 2000 and a visiting professor at the Department of Psychology, St. Petersburg State University (Russia) in 2008, at Venice International University (Italy) in 2015. His main research area is human judgment and decision-making, especially the mathematical modeling of preferential judgment and choice. He received a Hayashi Award (Distinguished Scholar) from the Behaviormetric Society (in 2002), an Excellent Paper Award from Japan Society of Kansei Engineering in 2003, BookAwards from the Japanese Society of Social Psychology (in 2010) and the Behaviormetric Society (in 2016), a Fellow Award from the International Association of Applied Psychology (in 2018), and Kimura Award, Transdisciplinary Federation of Science and Technology (in 2021), Outstanding User Modeling Paper Award from Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (in 2023), and Award for Science and Technology (Research Category), The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (in 2024). Throughout his career, he has taught behavioral decision theory at many universities and has published numerous books with major publishers, including Oxford University Press, Academic Press, and Springer Nature.