Hooray for Dr. Kawashima

Junko reads a weekly English-learning newspaper put out by the Japan Times called Shukan ST, that does a sort of news round-up with Japanese definitions of the more difficult vocabulary words at the bottom of each page. She showed me a story about Dr. Ryuuta Kawashima, the guy who developed the Brain Age/Brain Training games for the DS. He’s a professor at Tohoku University, studying brain mapping and neurophysiology. He says he wants to upload his brain after he dies and live on as an AI personality–which he kind of already is, in the games.

By university rules, he’s entitled to half of all royalties from products resulting from his university research–which sounds like a great incentive for researchers, while still letting the school get its share for providing facilities and the like. Well, it turns out that he has refused to take any of the money for himself. He says thanks, but the university pays him enough. Instead, he’s donated all that money to the university to build labs.

Awesome.

superdave