The turning point in my career path was a story that my professor told when I was a third-year undergraduate. The story was about a microgrid consisting of Variable Renewable Energy (VRE), small scale power plants, and Electric Vehicles (EV). I was impressed with this vision of the future and decided on my research theme. For my graduation research, I verified the impact on CO2 emissions from the widespread adoption of VRE and EV. For my master’s research, I studied investment planning for power generation facilities, considering both long-term and short-term uncertainties.
I aspired to accomplish something significant during my master’s course, so I challenged myself to participate in an international conference to present our study in English. In addition, I compiled my master’s thesis in English, with considerable support from my supervisor and assistant supervisor.
One of the advantages of entering graduate school, in my opinion, is the ability to find a specialization in which you are proficient. For me, that specialization is investment decision making. When looking for jobs, I sought to engage in work related to my research or specialization. Consequently, I joined a mobility company that leads the EV market worldwide. Currently, I am assigned to the costing department where I conduct analyses on costs and profits. In the future, I hope to develop new services utilizing EVs to shape the future envisioned by my professor, and hopefully impress others, just as I was impressed!

In management accounting laboratory, I am conducting research on building a model for identifying publicly traded Japanese companies that are engaged in accounting fraud. The growing prevalence of accounting scandals has made the task of detecting fraudulent practices through audits a more pressing issue. We plan to have our model (an accounting fraud detection model) used in the auditing field by certified public accountants (CPAs) and auditing firms, among others. To achieve this, we have partnered with a firm working on the leading edge of audit services to carry out the research with us and provide feedback on our findings to improve the model. Our current aim is to build a model that delivers greater accuracy and ease when interpreting the results, balancing the need to solve problems unresolved by previous research on accounting fraud with the model’s use in real-world practice.
Our research team consists of five undergraduate students—four 4th-years and one 3rd-year. I serve as team leader. In addition to building the dataset and selecting the model, I also manage each team member’s progress and provide guidance on reporting their research. In building the dataset, we’ve prepared a manual that instructs how data should be collected in the laboratory and incorporated into the dataset. We determine the manual’s content based on discussions with our research partners at the auditing firm, and address any issues or uncertainties together as they arise. We adopted this process partly because our dataset also serves as the database used by the auditing firm.
I’m also active in publishing my research findings. In my senior year of undergraduate study, I presented my graduation research at an overseas conference. After entering the master’s program, I presented at the spring conference of the Japan Industrial Management Association (JIMA) in May 2021 and won the Best Presentation Award, in recognition of the quality of my research and presentation. In fall of the same year, I authored and submitted two research papers. Going forward, I plan to present my research findings at Kanagawa University and elsewhere and continue to refine my research.

I originally planned to get a job when I graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, and received a tentative job offer from one of my preferred employers. However, when doing research for my graduation thesis, I became conflicted about whether to accept the job offer or to continue on with my researches. I started enjoying the process of gaining new insights through analyzing data, and my academic supervisor also recommended that I enroll in graduate school. So, after getting my parents’ endorsement, in January of my senior year I decided to decline the job offer and enroll in this program.
Now I’m conducting research on the relationship between the rankings shown by travel websites and word-of-mouth (WOM) communication. Using online text data written by website users about travel rankings, and applying text mining to this data to convert it into numerical variables, I am studying how WOM influences rankings. Text data is conventionally viewed as qualitative data, but with the application of text-mining methods, we can extract quantitative characteristics from otherwise qualitative text data.
During my time in the program, I have presented my research findings three times at conferences in Japan. Also, in spring of my first year in the master’s program, I polished my graduation thesis and submitted it for publication in the Journal of Japan Industrial Management Association (JIMA). After responding to comments from reviewers, my paper was accepted for publication in November of my second year in the master’s program.
After graduating, I plan to get a job at an IT firm. I hope to use what I learned through research and other experiences in the program to contribute to society.