Letter from Alumni

Ihsen Aziz Ouedraogo
Social ICT Business Division, ICT Policy and Strategy Research Group, Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.

I enrolled at University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo (UEC) in October 2010 after being granted a scholarship by the Japanese Government. Before coming to Japan I worked for several years in the Network Management Center of a mobile network operator in Burkina Faso, my home country. I did my undergraduate studies in Senegal and Benin, and majored in electrical engineering with the option of telecommunication and networks.

At UEC I joined Professor Eiji Oki's lab that specialized in advanced networking technologies, and received my master's degree and PhD in March 2013 and June 2016, respectively. During my 6 years in the Oki lab I conducted research related to IP routing (fast reroute), IP networks/traffic optimization and green communications. My PhD thesis introduced optimization models for robust and power efficient networks. The work in the thesis, which is the result of several years of training and collaboration with Prof. Oki, was accepted for publication in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications in 2016, and presented at the IEEE CQR 2016 conference. During my master's course and PhD combined, I also co-authored five papers that were published with IEICE, IET Networks and IEEE journals.

I enjoyed the international and friendly environment in the Oki lab that had students from many countries (Japan, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, Indonesia, Laos, Senegal, Cameroun, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Thailand, China etc.), which makes the lab very special in UEC. I also really appreciate the support provided by the university to foreign students through the organization of wide ranging activities and the Japanese language classes. This significantly helped me to integrate in Japan.

During my doctoral research I had the desire to pursue an activity that would not only leverage my research experience but also allow me to proactively contribute and have a direct impact on society using some of my other skills. In April 2016, two months before graduating, I joined Mitsubishi Research Institute, which is the consulting company of Mitsubishi group in Japan. In my section we carry out research related to information and communication technology (ICT) policy and strategy, while advising and providing services to the government and businesses. It is challenging to work in a Japanese environment but a good opportunity to grow.
This new step in my life was made possible thanks to the advice and mentoring from my advisor Prof. Oki and the support from all of my Japanese language teachers at UEC.
I am very grateful for being able to study at UEC, Tokyo.