Keynote Speaker I
Prof. Tetsuya Sakai, Waseda University, Japan
Tetsuya Sakai is a professor (2015–) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Waseda University, Japan, and serves as Dean of the Center for Data Science (2026–). He is also a General Research Advisor at Naver Corporation, Korea (2021–), and a visiting professor at the National Institute of Informatics, Japan (2015–). He joined Toshiba in 1993 and received his Ph.D. from Waseda University in 2000 while continuing his work there. From 2000 to 2001, he conducted research under the supervision of the late Karen Sparck Jones at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He later served as Director of the Natural Language Processing Lab at NewsWatch, Inc. (2007), and joined Microsoft Research Asia in 2009 before moving to the Waseda faculty in 2013. At Waseda, he served as Associate Dean (IT Strategies Division) from 2015 to 2017 and as Department Head from 2017 to 2019. He is an ACM Distinguished Member and an IPSJ Fellow. He was inducted into the SIGIR Academy in 2023 and received the Keith van Rijsbergen Award in 2026. Since 2021, he has served as Senior Associate Editor and Acting Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Information Systems.
Speech: Evaluating the Confidence of Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems
Conversational search systems—particularly those built on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)—should express high confidence when their answers are correct, enabling users and downstream applications to rely on them. Conversely, they should signal uncertainty when they are not confident; in many cases, responding with “I don’t know” is preferable to providing an incorrect answer. This keynote presents the latest findings from a new evaluation task to be completed at NTCIR‑19 (the 19th NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research conference), called R2C2: RAG Responses—Confident and Correct?. R2C2 is designed to assess the ability of RAG systems to produce appropriate confidence scores alongside their answers. Twelve research teams from eight countries and regions have registered to participate in the task.
Keynote Speaker II
Prof. Kam-Fai Wong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Kam-Fai Wong is Professor in Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, CUHK. He is also Director of Key Laboratory on High Confidence Software Technologies (Sub-Lab, CUHK), Ministry of Education, and Honorary Professor of Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen.
His research interest focuses on Natural Language Processing and Agentic AI. He has published over 350 technical papers in these areas in different international journals, conferences and books. He is a senior member of IEEE, fellows of ACL, BCS (UK), IEE (UK) and HKIE and Honorary Fellow, Hong Kong Professional Validation Council. Also, He is the founding Editor-In-Chief of ACM Transactions on Asian Language Processing (TALIP), K.F. is very active in professional activities and social services. He serves as Member, The 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; Executive Committee, Guangdong Provincial Association for Advancement of Guangdong, Hong Kong & Macau Greater Bay Area Cooperation; Standing Committee, 6th Shenzhen Association for Science and Technology; International Advisory Committee, 12th Guangzhou Association for Science and Technology as well as ex-member of 12th Gunagzhou Committee of the Chinese People'sPeople's Consultative Conference.
Locally, KF is Director, Finance Dispute Resolution Centre Board; ex-Chairman of the Vetting Committee of the IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Initiative; ex-Chairman, ICT Advisory Committee, HK Scout Association; ex-Vice-Chairperson of the CreateSmart Initiative Vetting Committee; Member, Technology Advisory Committee of the eBRAM International Online Dispute Resolution Centre; ex-Member, Radio Television Hong Kong Board of Advisors; Member of The Hong Kong Society for the Aged Advisory Committee on ICT Development.
Keynote Speaker III
Prof. Wookey Lee, Inha University, South Korea
Professor Wookey Lee is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Science and Engineering at Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea, where he also serves as Director of the Voice AI Research Institute. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Seoul National University and an M.S.E. degree from Carnegie Mellon University.
His research spans artificial intelligence and data engineering, with particular emphasis on deep learning, voice and speech AI, multimodal learning, meta-learning, privacy-preserving data analytics, patent intelligence, and AI-enabled biomedical and industrial systems. His recent work has appeared in, or been accepted by, leading international conferences, including CVPR, ACL, and ICDM, as well as prominent journals such as Pattern Recognition, Information Sciences, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and Sensors. His recent research addresses Physical AI, Multimodal fingertip-contact detection, Automatic sign-language processing, Personalized emotion visualization, Speech recognition and emotion analysis, Hyperspectral anomaly detection, and Intelligent industrial sensing.
Professor Lee has received numerous distinctions for his research, including multiple Best Paper Awards from ACM BigDas in 2016, 2019, and 2021, an IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing Award in 2012, and the Patent Commissioner’s Award from Statistics Korea. He has served in senior organizational and program roles for a broad range of major international conferences, including ASONAM, IEEE BigComp, IEEE BigComp, CIKM, ER, ICDE, PAKDD, SAC, SocialCom, VLDB, DASFAA, DEXA, and related conferences.
He has been Vice-chair of the Steering Committee of IEEE BigComp, and a member of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering. He has also served as an Associate Editor for several international journals, including World Wide Web, Data & Knowledge Engineering, Cluster Computing, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Supercomputing, and Sensors. Through his sustained contributions to scholarship, professional service, and technology transfer, he has established an interdisciplinary research profile bridging foundational AI research with practical applications in healthcare, industry, and human-centered intelligent systems.