DATE2024.04.09 #Awards & Prizes

Associate Professor Sousuke Ito received the 2024 Young Scientist Award from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

Associate Professor Sousuke Ito

Associate Professor Sousuke Ito of the Universal Biology Institute has been honored with the 2024 Young Scientist Award from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for his "Research on Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics Based on Information Geometry".

In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to the investigation of the thermodynamic characteristics of non-equilibrium systems exhibiting stochastic behaviors, including Brownian motion and molecular motors. Within the framework of stochastic thermodynamics, numerous laws governing thermodynamics have been elucidated.

Associate Professor Sousuke Ito has significantly advanced the informational-theoretic dimensions of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, elucidating universal principles that delineate the interplay between energy dissipation and the precision of information processing, which is applicable to biological systems. His research team has discovered universal principles for the thermodynamic tradeoff between dissipation and either precision or rapidity, derived from geometric inequalities. Moreover, through the incorporation of information geometry and optimal transport theory, cornerstones of machine learning's mathematical underpinnings, his team has formulated a novel geometric framework for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, demonstrating its applicability and potential for broad extrapolation. These scholarly contributions are poised to enhance comprehension of energy dissipation in information processing, foster advancements in the mathematics underpinning information processing, and facilitate the future development of energy-efficient devices and innovative machine learning methodologies.

2024 Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/mext_01364.html

(Responsibility: Professor Chikara Furusawa, Universal Biology Institute)