
Tomohiro Furusawa
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
- Tomoko Uchida, Tomohiro Furusawa, Jun Oya, Ryo Kato, Shogo Suzuki, Shinzaku Kono. Search Systems: A Development and Improvement Guide for Practitioners. Lambda Note. May 2, 2022, 1st Edition
- Introduction to Search Engineering for Library and Information Science Geeks. Released on February 26, 2020
- Tomohiro Furusawa, Mamiko Matsubayashi, Tetsuji Satoh. Users’ preferences for answer forms to reference questions in libraries. iiWAS ‘16, Singapore, November 28 - 30, 2016
- Tomohiro Furusawa, Mamiko Matsubayashi, Tetsuji Satoh. General Public’s Expectations for Answer Formats of Reference Questions. Annual Conference of the Japan Society of Library and Information Science, May 28, 2016
- Tomohiro Furusawa, Mamiko Matsubayashi, Tetsuji Satoh. Differences between Reference Questions in Libraries and Questions on Q&A Sites. Jointly Co-organized by the Information Processing Society of Japan, The 7th Forum on Data Engineering and Information Management, DEIM2015, A1-5 (Mar. 2015).
Interview Articles
- Insights Gained from Shifting Careers Between Engineering and Product Management at Mercari | mercari AI (December 20, 2022)
- Reflecting on Mercari’s Discovery Experience: From Launching the Recommendation Team to the Future | mercari AI (December 20, 2022)
- “Too Much Data, Too Fine-Grained”: What Mercari PMs Learned in Feature Development | mercan (Mercan) April 20, 2022
- “Being Different from Everyone Else”: Mercari’s Pursuit of Personalization | mercan (Mercan) (April 7, 2021)
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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Built systems using machine learning to improve search paths on existing websites.
- Maintained and operated advertising operation systems utilizing machine learning.
Internship Experience
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
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).