Photo credit: Robin Haseba
Naohiro Matsumura
Naohiro Matsumura is a professor in the graduate school of economics at Osaka University, specializing in behavioural economics. He received a BS and MS in engineering science from Osaka University, and a PhD in engineering from the University of Tokyo, where he studied artificial intelligence. In 2015, he advocated for a new research field called ‘shikakeology’. He wrote a paper with his Stanford University colleagues Renate Fruchter and Larry Leifer that laid out the principles of shikakeology and formally defined a shikake as ‘an embodied trigger for behaviour change to solve social or personal problems’. In 2017, Dr Matsumura was awarded the Osaka University Award in recognition of his pioneering contributions to shikakeology and data-science education. He has since collected and conceived of hundreds of shikakes in his pursuit to understand the myriad mechanisms that make them work.
