Autobiography
When sitting down to write an autobiography, progress is always stymied by the thought of who am I to publish an autobiography online? But after some thought, I've realized it gives me a good chance to say "thanks" to all those I've encountered along the way, so here we go.
As noted on the top page of this website, I am originally from Canada, born and raised in Calgary. I had a great upbringing with lots of freedom and encouragement to do whatever caught my interest, and close friends to share those interests with (see the above photo as an example). As a result, I have had the opportunity to learn a lot in my life, I have met many interesting people, and have been lucky to have countless adventures.
A major turning point for me was my "study abroad" in Osaka at age 19. It was a one-year exchange program, but something about Japan clicked in a very deep way with me, and many years later, I'm still in Osaka, though I've lived in Kyoto and Nara as well.
Over the past couple decades (!!), for better or worse I have followed my instinct with what to study and how to spend my time. For the first year or two in Japan, I basically dropped everything and focused on studying Japanese, since I had zero previous experience with the language before (let alone Japanese culture), and it really was an eye-opening intellectual stimulus for me. I worked long hours every day, and went out and interacted with friends and strangers most nights and weekends. It was intense, but I was able to read/write/speak the language in relatively short time (for an anglophone), and that set the foundation for everything else I've done here since.
After a year and a half of intense Japanese study, I needed to get back to real life, i.e., study something that might allow me to make a living. I naively dove into theoretical economics and finance, thinking it was a "safe route" of sorts. While I enjoyed learning a lot of mathematics and statistics along the way, given that my experience in the real world of business was limited to a couple summer jobs in the fancy offices of a big oil company, I found a lot of the material exceedingly terse and unconvincing, despite (or perhaps because of?) the high degree of polish with which it was presented in textbooks.
So, following my gut again, I started looking elsewhere for intellectual stimulus, and I found it. I bought Learning From Data, a short introductory textbook written by Caltech Professor Yaser Abu-Mostafa and friends. That book, with its inviting prose, lucid figures, and just-enough mathematical rigor blew my mind, and drew me in to classical Vapnik-Chervonenkis binary classification theory, and started me on another new adventure.
After waffling over a decision whether to study finance in Tokyo or machine learning in Nara, some well-timed advice from a trusted advisor pushed me in the right direction (i.e., the latter). Five years of graduate school in Nara were also intense, and not without their struggles, but unbelievably rewarding. For the first couple years of grad school, I never imagined I would get into an academic career, but thanks to lots of interaction with inspiring teachers and friends, bit by bit the "right" path for me became evident. Nara is now like a second home to me.
After grad school, I've been living and working in Osaka. While during the last few years of my PhD I desperately wanted to secure a comfortable academic post with sufficient freedom, I knew the reality was not so rosy and that it can be a very tough game to get into. After luckily obtaining a postdoc at the University of Osaka (then known as Osaka University), a string of fortuitous encounters brought my work to the attention of some "big players" in this game who also happen to be very welcoming and kind. Those connections proved critical in the first years of my academic career, and the rest is history. I'm having more adventures than ever, working hard, and still learning a lot (about learning).
Getting back to the promise made at the start of this post, I would like to conclude by saying thanks to everyone I've encountered along the way. Family (in Canada and Japan), friends, advisors, rivals, even a nemesis or two. It has all made for a rich, memorable journey, and I am going to keep at it as long as I can. Thanks!
