About Me

I am a research scientist at IBM Research AI. Before joining IBM, I was a graduate student in Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Tokyo. During my master's degree, I participated in the development or operation of small satellites (e.g., EQUULEUS).

My Japanese name is 和地 瞭良. I like reading, traveling, and eating.

Research Interests

My research interests are in Machine Learning, Autonomous Control, and Robotics. Especially, I have been working on:

  • Safe Reinforcement Learnig
  • Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
  • Adversarial Reinforcement Learning

More specifically, I aim to apply reinforcement learning to create a reliable and safer society. For example, in a recent publication (IJCAI-19), I proposed a method to test an autonomous driving car by training other cars in an adversarial way using multi-agent reinforcement learning.

Selected Publication

Safe Reinforcement Learning in Constrained Markov Decision Processes

  • Akifumi Wachi, Yanan Sui
  • International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2020
PDF

Failure-Scenario Maker for Rule-Based Agent using Multi-agent Adversarial Reinforcement Learning and its Application to Autonomous Driving

  • Akifumi Wachi
  • International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2019
PDF

Safe Exploration and Optimization of Constrained MDPs using Gaussian Processes

  • Akifumi Wachi, Yanan Sui, Yisong Yue, Masahiro Ono
  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2018
PDF
Full Publication List

Professional Activities

Conference Program Committee / Reviewer

  • ICML 2021
  • AAAI 2020, 2021
  • IJCAI 2020, 2021
  • EMNLP 2020
  • ACL 2020, 2021

Awards and Fellowships

Awards

  • Dean’s Award (Second Prize), from Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 2018
  • Best Student Paper Award (First Prize), Joint Conference: 31st ISTS, 26th ISSFD, and 8th NSAT, 2017, [link]
  • Best Student Paper Award (First Prize), IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (ACA), 2016, [link]

Fellowships

  • Financial support to participate in Thirty-second AAAI conference on Artificial Intelligence by Society for Promotion of Space Science (SPSS), February, 2018
  • Financial support to participate in International Astronautical Congress (IAC) by the Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences (JSASS), September, 2017
  • Go Global Scholarships 2016 Short Study Abroad Scholarships: the University of Tokyo, 2016
  • Fellowship of the Leading Graduates Schools Program: Global Leader Program for Social Design and Management by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan, 2016