In his research, Kentaro studies digital technology and social change. Recent projects include an application of critical race theory to human-computer interaction, digital storytelling to support global maternal health, and a study of technology use by undocumented US immigrants.
Based on his research, Kentaro promotes the theory that for the most part, technology amplifies underlying human forces -- improving things where individuals and institutions are well-intentioned and capable, but having little or negative impact where human forces are indifferent, dysfunctional, or corrupt. Often, technology amplifies the impact of good, bad, left, right, optimistic, and pessimistic human inclinations simultaneously, leading to society's deeply ambivalent relationship with technology. Amplification offers a predictive, balanced alternative to theories that suggest that technology's impact on society is always good, or always bad, or always too complex to capture concisely.
Previously, Kentaro was a researcher at UC Berkeley and assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he played a key role in the lab's growth, overseeing a variety of functions as it grew to over 60 full-time research staff. He also established the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research to understand how the world's poorer communities interact with electronic technology and to invent new ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. The award-winning group is known for projects such as MultiPoint, Text-Free User Interfaces, and Digital Green. Kentaro co-founded the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) to provide a global platform for rigorous academic research in this field. From 2012 through 2020, he was co-editor-in-chief of the journal Information Technologies and International Development.
Prior to his time in India, Kentaro did computer vision, artificial intelligence, and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana.
Kentaro graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard with a bachelors degree in Physics. He was born in Tokyo, raised in both Japan and the United States, and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.