Hirokazu Shirado (2016)

Hirokazu Shirado is a researcher in the field of social networks and human-machine interactions. In particular, he has been committed to the experimental study of cooperative behaviors within interactions between people (and machines) taking place within social networks.

A student at Yale University's Department of Sociology, Hirokazu is using the fourth National Institute seed grant to complete his dissertation on cooperative behaviors within social networks. He has also studied at the Human Nature Lab at the Yale Institute for Network Science.

Prior to Yale, he spent eight years as an engineering researcher at Sony Corporation. At Sony, his group specialized in robotics for personal use, and he lead development of human-robot interaction systems and field research to explore genuine customer value. While conducting a field test of personal robots at a nursing home, he realized that interpersonal bonds, rather than high-technology gadgets, ultimately supported people. He started seeking a mechanism that can help building social reciprocities, and his research focus shifted to include social networks.