Shuji Hirakawa received Ph.D. degree from University of Tokyo in 1978. As a Ph.D. student, he pioneered research on “coded modulation”. His ground-breaking work was published in a paper, co-authored with Professor Hideki Imai, in the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology (Vol. IT-23, pp.371-377, 1977.) and was selected as one of seventeen papers to receive IEEE Golden Jubilee Paper Award in 1998. Additionally, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) in Japan gave him the honor of IEICE Centennial Milestone in September 2017 identifying their work as one of the origins of “Codec Modulation.”
Dr. Hirakawa joined Toshiba Corporation in 1978. In late 80’s and early 90’s, he was deeply involved in the development of MUSE encoder for analog HDTV transmission. From 1998, his group developed a new broadcasting satellite service (BSS) system for digital sound broadcasting and was adopted by Japanese industrial standardization body (ARIB) as the domestic standard. In ITU-R, he developed Recommendation BO.1130 System E for Japanese BSS (sound) in 1999 and 2000. He left Toshiba Corporation in March 2017 and joined Japanese Standards Association in July 2017.
Dr. Hirakawa has been a key member in many international standardization organizations. He was a vice-chairman of ITU-R WP 6M (multimedia and interactive broadcasting system) and WP 6B (broadcast service assembly and access) until Oct. 2015 for digital broadcasting transmission side standardization. In parallel, he was the Secretary of IEC TC 100 (audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment) from 2004 to 2010 for digital broadcasting receiving side. From 2011 to 2016, he was the IEC Standardization Management Board (SMB) member representing the IEC National Committee of Japan. Currently, he is the Chair of IEC TC 124 (wearable electronic devices and technologies) from June 2017.
In IEEE, he was an editorial board member of the Proceeding of the IEEE from 2006 to 2012. He was the Secretary 2004-05, the Vice Chairman 2006-07 and the Chairman 2008-09 of IEEE Broadcast Technology Japan Chapter. Additionally, he hosted IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting (BMSB) 2016 in Nara City, Japan.
Dr. Hirakawa is an IEEE Life Fellow and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting.
shuji.hirakawa@ieee.org