Shunta Asano

CV

Last updated September 2026

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Profile

I am an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Tokyo, with a focus on Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. My research interests lie in natural language processing, large language models, multilingual evaluation, and language technologies for education and cross-cultural communication.

Education

Apr. 2022 – Mar. 2027 (expected)

The University of Tokyo

B.Eng., Faculty of Engineering · Tokyo, Japan

  • Focus: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. GPA: 3.91 / 4.00.
  • Advisor: Prof. Toshihiko Yamasaki.

Sep. 2024 – Jun. 2025

University College London (UCL)

Official Exchange Student, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering · London, UK

  • Nominated by The University of Tokyo for an official exchange programme.
  • Completed 90 UCL credits, equivalent to 45 ECTS credits.

Research Experience

Jun. 2026 – present

ETH Zurich, Department of Computer Science

Student Summer Research Fellow · Advisor: Prof. Mrinmaya Sachan · Zurich, Switzerland

  • Selected as one of 20 fellows from over 2,000 applications.
  • Conducting a research project on multilingual LLM tutors for educational settings.

Jun. 2025 – present

University College London (UCL)

Research Collaborator · Advisors: Prof. Miguel R. D. Rodrigues and Reem I. Masoud · London, UK

  • Conducted research on large language models and dataset linguistic structure.
  • Co-authored a workshop paper accepted to ICLR 2026 Workshop DATA-FM.

Selected Publications

  • S. Asano, J. Baek, and T. Yamasaki. “Beyond Bilingual Transfer: Multilingual Code-Switching in Instruction Tuning.” Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: AACL-IJCNLP 2026, 2026 (to appear). Also presented at MIRU 2026.
  • R. I. Masoud, C. Feng, S. Asano, S. Alshahrani, P. C. Treleaven, and M. R. D. Rodrigues. “Beyond Training for Cultural Awareness: The Role of Dataset Linguistic Structure in Large Language Models.” ICLR 2026 Workshop on Navigating and Addressing Data Problems for Foundation Models (DATA-FM), 2026.
  • V. Zouhar et al. “Last Translation Benchmark.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2609.04173, 2026.

See all publications with links →

Selected Awards

  • Toyota Riken Overseas Scholarship — selected as one of up to 10 fellows nationwide, receiving up to JPY 10 million (approx. USD 65,000) annually for graduate study leading to a Ph.D. abroad, beginning in Fall 2027.
  • ETH Student Summer Research Fellowship, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 2026 — one of 20 fellows from over 2,000 applications.
  • Vena Energy Scholarship — awarded to the top two students in a cohort of approximately 1,000 at the Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo.
  • GLP-GEfIL Scholarship — awarded to selected University of Tokyo students conducting research abroad.
  • Integration Bee 2025, 1st Place, University College London.

The full list of scholarships and awards is in the PDF above.

Selected Experience

Jul. 2022 – present

Mantra Inc.

Content Development Lead / Research Intern · Tokyo, Japan

  • Developed a human-in-the-loop pipeline leveraging large language models to generate educational content for English learners in Japan.
  • Supervised a team of 10+ contributors and established quality control protocols to ensure pedagogical accuracy.

Jul. 2025 – Mar. 2026

MentorMind

Chief Technology Officer · London, UK

  • Led product and technology strategy for an early-stage education technology startup.

Mar. 2026

UTEC

Venture Capital Intern · Tokyo, Japan

  • Conducted market and technology research to support investment analysis in deep tech and university-originated startups.

Sep. 2024

RAKSUL INC.

Summer Intern, Engineering · Tokyo, Japan

  • Worked on English prompt engineering for an LLM-based product description generation system, reducing human workload by approximately 50%.

Aug. 2022

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)

Summer Intern · Tokyo, Japan

  • Analyzed structural challenges in the Japanese education system with policymakers, focusing on increasing the number of PhD holders.

Earlier roles in language teaching and translation are listed in the PDF above.

Projects and Activities

Nov. 2025 – May 2026

Africa Youth Social Entrepreneurship Program

Selected Fellow, UNIDO and The University of Tokyo · Tokyo, Japan / Kenya

  • Proposed an NLP-based solution for low-resource languages to bridge the linguistic divide between vernacular and academic dialects in Africa, with a particular focus on Kenya.

Mar. 2026 – present

UTokyo Africa Akamon-kai

Founding Member, alumni association · Tokyo, Japan

  • Contributed to founding a University of Tokyo community connecting students, alumni, and professionals with interests in Africa.

Skills

  • Programming languages: Python, C/C++
  • Machine learning and NLP: PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, scikit-learn, LLM fine-tuning and evaluation, prompt engineering
  • Data analysis: pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, statistical analysis

Languages

  • Japanese — Native
  • English — CEFR C2 (TOEFL iBT 118/120)
  • Spanish — Intermediate, approx. CEFR B1
  • German — Elementary, approx. CEFR A2