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Tomohiro Furusawa

Product Manager Mercari, Inc.
A product manager who was born in library and information science and raised in data science, and is a software engineer. Enjoys search, recommendation, and organizational theory.

About

I have been involved in product development related to search and recommendation systems since my university days, with a background in library and information science. After graduating from graduate school, I joined Recruit Co., Ltd. as a data scientist, where I worked on tasks ranging from implementing machine learning in existing services to developing new businesses. Since 2019, I have been working at Mercari, Inc. as a data scientist, focusing on improving search systems. Later on, I transitioned to the role of a software engineer at the same company, where I worked on developing large-scale recommendation systems. In parallel, I promoted team development as a Scrum Master and have been driving product development as a Product Manager.

Publications, Articles, and Awards

Books and Papers

Interview Articles

Awards

  • July 2023 - Mercari, Inc. MVP Award (Janualy-June 2023)
  • September 2022 - Digital Hack Day 2022 Finalist (Top 10 out of 77 teams)
  • February 2022 - Mercari, Inc. MVP Award (June-December 2021)
  • October 2021 - Digital Hack Day 2021 First Prize (¥3,000,000 prize)
  • March 2021 - Mercari Hack Week Bronze Award
  • March 2020 - Mercari Hack Week Gold Award
  • December 2018 - Yahoo! JAPAN Hack Day 2018 Tech Award
  • June 2018 - SPAJAM2018 Tokyo B Preliminary Outstanding Award
  • May 2018 - AngelHack Tokyo 2018 LINE Award / IBM Award / Grand Prize
  • December 2017 - Yahoo! JAPAN Hack Day 10th Anniv. Hackathon Tech Award
  • June 2017 - SPAJAM2017 Tokyo C Preliminary Best Award
  • May 2017 - Full Exemption of First Class Scholarship for Graduate Students
  • March 2017 - Dean’s Commendation, Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies
  • February 2017 - Yahoo! JAPAN Hack Day 2017 Outstanding Award
  • December 2016 - Mirai Media Camp 2016 Mirai Media Camp Award (Hosted by Asahi Shimbun, Special Cooperation: Keio University SDM Research School, Cooperation: Think the Earth)
  • November 28-29, 2015 - Hacker Wars Grand Prize, Jigen Corporation Award
  • September 2-4, 2015 - DMM Ideathon + Hackathon Individual Award Runner-up MVP, Team 2nd Place
  • March 2015 - Dean’s Commendation, Faculty of Informatics, University of Tsukuba

Work Experience

Mercari, Inc. — Product Manager

Product Team · Japan
April 2022 - Present
  • Developed and executed product strategies for the discovery experience.
  • Strategized and drove the direction of the entire home screen and recommendation feature.

Mercari, Inc. — Scrum Master / Software Engineer

AI/Personalization Team · Japan
May 2020 - June 2022
  • Introduced Scrum to product teams and improved team development processes in a remote setup.
  • Worked on the development, operation, and enhancement of large-scale recommendation systems.

Mercari, Inc. — Data Scientist

Data Science Team · Japan
May 2019 - April 2020
  • Developed strategies for search improvement and designed experiments for effectiveness measurement.
  • Established evaluation release workflows for search and recommendations.
  • Proof of Concept (PoC) for recommendation features.
  • Initiated the Recommendation Team.

Recruit Co., Ltd. — Data Scientist

Data Management Department · Japan
April 2017 - April 2019
  • Built systems using machine learning to improve search paths on existing websites.
  • Maintained and operated advertising operation systems utilizing machine learning.

Internship Experience

Japan
2015 - 2016

March 2016 - pixiv 2016 SPRING BOOT CAMP

Planned and implemented email strategies to prevent user attrition.

March 2016 - Sonnet Media Networks

Conducted data analysis on DSP logs and prototyped a violation detection system using machine learning.

February 2016 - Recruit Holdings Internship

Participated in the Data Analyst course, conducted data analysis related to user behavior logs on websites using Python, among other tasks.

August-September 2015 - DMM.com Lab

Created smartphone app APIs using PHP as a server-side engineer.

Part Time Experience

Japan
2015 - 2016

June 2015-February 2016 - University of Tsukuba, Faculty of Informatics, Knowledge Information and Library Studies Programming Exercise TA

Teaching Assistant for programming classes (Language: Ruby).

Education

University of Tsukuba, Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies — Master of Information Science

April 2015 - March 2017
Conducted research on people’s expectations for Q&A services through a comparison of the Reference Service, a library Q&A service, with Q&A sites like Yahoo! Chiebukuro. The research findings were recognized and the results were accepted at international conferences.

University of Tsukuba, Faculty of Informatics, Knowledge Information and Library Studies — Bachelor of Library and Information Science

April 2011 - March 2015
Studied the field of “Library and Information Science,” which focuses on the systematic organization of technology and knowledge for collecting, organizing, storing, and providing the overflow of information and knowledge in the world. Conducted research on social media and Q&A services.