Takashi Yanagihara
Founder & CEO, Ridge-i
In 2016, he founded Ridge-i to create a new vision of society by presenting and applying the potential of advanced technologies, with a focus on deep learning and artificial intelligence, to business and society. He continues to suggest and implement the use of AI for the ever-increasing amount of satellite data in the constellation trend, and is involved in several public positions in space and satellite development.
His team was awarded the Fourth and Fifth Space Exploitation Prizes, organized by the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan.
After graduating from the School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University, he joined NTT Communications Corporation, where he was involved in new business planning.He also worked for major financial institutions such as HSBC and BlackRock Japan, building high-frequency trading and securities risk management systems.
His strength lies in his ability to propose and implement cutting-edge technologies and theories to impact business significantly.
[Recent Achievements and Activities]
| Mar. 2022 | Awarded the "Minister of the Environment Prize" for "GRASP EARTH: Satellite-based Discovery of SDGs Issues and Environmental Changes" at the Fifth Space Exploitation Prize. |
|---|---|
| Dec. 2021 | Launched "GRASP EARTH Forest" to detect large-scale deforestation |
| Oct. 2021 | Released "Pumice Viewer" to detect pumice drift from satellite images |
| Aug. 2021 | Released free alpha version of "Tellus VPL," a parking lot detection tool developed with Sakura Internet Inc. and akippa Inc., to the satellite data platform "Tellus" |
| Mar. 2021 | Released "GRASP EARTH," the global change detect application that uses satellite data to instantly find changes occurring on the Earth |
| Mar. 2021 | Participated in S-NET Seminar in Tokyo 2021 Panel Discussion |
| Mar. 2021 | Contributed to Keidanren magazine "Kaiho-Uchu 2021 No. 69" |
| Sep. 2020 | Interviewed in a feature article on S-NET |
| Aug. 2020 | Published the extent of damage caused by the heavy oil spill off the coast of Mauritius, analyzed by AI from SAR satellite images on Yahoo! News |
| Apr. 2020 | "AI Analysis of Satellite Data for Landslide Disaster Detection" was featured in the "Collection of Good Practices Using Satellite Data for Business" published by the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan |
| Mar. 2020 | Awarded the “Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Prize” for "AI Analysis of Satellite Data for Landslide Disaster Detection, etc." at the Fourth Space Exploitation Prize. |