معرفی
Kana Shimizu is a Professor at Waseda University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Fundamental Science and Engineering, and a leading authority on privacy-preserving algorithms for genome and biomedical data. Since obtaining her Dr.Eng. from Waseda, she has held positions at AIST and a visiting investigator role at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, advancing to full Professor at Waseda in 2018.
Education:
- Dr.Eng., Waseda University
- M.Eng., Waseda University (Dept. of Information Science)
- B.Eng., Waseda University (School of Science and Engineering)
Research Interests:
Prof. Shimizu integrates cryptography with life-science data analytics, developing homomorphic encryption and secret-sharing protocols that enable secure genome search, private chemical database queries, and privacy-preserving machine learning. She also contributes to computational biology through algorithms for next-generation sequencing, structural bioinformatics, and prediction of intrinsically disordered proteins.
Publication Trends:
Her recent works (2022-2024) emphasize practical privacy technologies—secure range queries, function secret sharing, and gradient-clipping for synthetic genomes—while earlier high-impact papers established fast similarity search (SlideSort), binding-site databases (PoSSuM), and encrypted genomic search using the Burrows-Wheeler transform, collectively bridging algorithmic innovation and real-world biomedical privacy needs.
Scientific Awards:
- KDDI Foundation Achievement Award 2022
- MEXT Commendation for Science and Technology (Research) 2018
- Multiple best-paper/demo awards at CSS, IIBMP, and domestic bioinformatics meetings
Grants & Advising:
She currently leads JSPS KAKENHI (S) on “Compressed Secure Computation for Large-Scale Data” and an AMED project on precise cancer-genome graphs. She serves as advisor/evaluator for JST PRESTO, AMED, NBDC, and the Tokyo High Court, and has supervised numerous bachelor theses at Waseda.
Labs & Teams:
Prof. Shimizu heads a laboratory within the School of Fundamental Science and Engineering at Waseda, collaborating with national centers (AIST, RIKEN) and international partners (MSKCC, Finland Tekes/AF), focusing on encrypted bioinformatics platforms and high-performance genomic algorithms.
