The Organizations I Work With, Or, Where my Time Goes

 If you're waiting on an answer to an email from me, or I owe you a document, or for some reason my inability to get something done is inconveniencing you, I apologize.  I really shouldn't spread myself so thin, but the fact is that there are a lot of things in this world I care about. Worse, as a professor, I don't have a boss. The great thing about not having a boss is that nobody tells you what to do. The terrible thing is that nobody tells you what not to do.  There's no one to defend you: "That's a great project, but Rod's busy. He's available the middle of next year, or you can find some else."

As a prof, we have essentially four major duties:

• Teaching: one of the big, obvious ones.
• Research: the other big, obvious one. This includes both doing the research yourself, and managing the research (budgets, schedules, purchasing, hiring, etc.).
• University service (running the university): the amount of this varies depending on your position, how useful you are (making yourself useless/unreliable gets you out of some of this), and the structure of your institution.
• Community service: participating in your community, defined however is appropriate for you. Might be the literal community around your campus, might be running a journal or a conference.

For me, and for most of us, community service means working with colleagues in our own and other universities, companies, government labs, and government committees,  to further the field as a whole. In some cases, this benefits your own research projects, in some cases it's much more indirect.

My primary research area, as you probably know, is quantum computing and quantum networking, but I also care about computer networking in general, and distance education and educational technology (though I have no formal training in the latter).

So, here are most of the organizations I'm working with these days (as of 2020/10/1). Some of these are internal to Keio, i.e. a structure for doing research.  Others are external.

• AQUA: my own quantum computing & quantum networking research group at Keio's Shonan Fujisawa Campus. Truly, the center of my professional life.
• RG: our larger lab on campus, an umbrella for managing over 100 undergrads in a broad variety of computing areas.
• AQUA @WIDE: there is also the AQUA working group inside of the WIDE Project. We generally hold a small meeting during the semi-annual WIDE Camp, or run a tutorial during the semi-annual WIDE Kenkyuukai, things like that.
• WIDE: I'm a WIDE Project Board Member. I do much less for WIDE than most of the other board members, but even so I do quite a bit.
• KQCC: the Keio Quantum Computing Center, where I am Vice Center Chair. I supervise and participate in a good fraction of the research, but the Founder and Center Chair have actually done most of the heavy lifting on paperwork, recruiting member companies and partners, hiring, etc.
• CCRC: the Keio Cyber Civilization Research Center. Rather than a driver, I'm a participant here, but this is important work, as well.
• SOI-Asia and AIII: my involvement here is small, but I do what I can. We're working with some of the SOI-Asia partners to share our MOOC on quantum computing, including translating the MOOC into important languages in Southeast Asia. I also have one Ph.D. student working on technology in language teaching, and this is one of her primary "homes".
• AINTEC: I'm on the steering committee for the Asian Internet Engineering Conference.
• JFLI: I'm Keio's representative to the Japan-France Laboratory for Informatics.
• QIRG: I'm co-chair of the Quantum Internet Research Group, part of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
• IRSG: being co-chair of QIRG puts me on the Internet Research Steering Group. This means I should be doing a lot more for the IRTF as a whole than I have been.
• QITF: here in Japan, we are standing up the Quantum Internet Task Force, bringing together most of the researchers in Japan who are working on quantum repeaters.
• WQRN: I'm part of the organizing committee for the Workshop for Quantum Repeaters and Networks.
• TQE: I've joined the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering, for the moment as an editor for the special section but probably more work coming up.

This doesn't even list the campus committees and program (department) duties, etc. It also doesn't even begin to address handling my research projects -- all that's just lumped under "AQUA" up there at the top.

And in a normal year, I travel to visit collaborators in Thailand, Paris, U.S., Hyderabad, etc., not to mention the conferences and meetings. I often feel depressed and overwhelmed by work, like I'm not getting anywhere near enough done. But then I look at this list, and wonder how I ever get any sleep and time at home.

[Edit on 20/12/3: Add JFLI]