Gakuto Kurata

Dr. Gakuto KURATA is a Distinguished Engineer and Chief Scientist for Spoken Conversational Systems at IBM Research. He is the senior manager of AI technologies at IBM Research - Tokyo and currently leads research and development of Large Language Models and Large Speech Models in Japan in collaboration with global IBM Research and Development teams. By closely collaborating with Sales and Consulting teams, he accelerates AI adoption in business by translating customer requirements into products.

He joined IBM in April 2004, after obtaining M.S. in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo. He received a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo in 2013. He was the Technical Assistant to the Director of IBM Research - Tokyo in 2014. He is an IBM Master Inventor and a member of IBM Academy of Technology. He served as an elected member of the IEEE SLTC (Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee) from 2018 to 2024. He has more than 20 years of research and development experiences in speech technology, natural language processing, and their combinations. He earned Technology Development Award from Acoustical Society of Japan in 2018 and Industrial Achievement Award from Information Processing Society of Japan in 2021.