Izumi Aizu is Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for InfoSocinomics, Kumon Center, Tama University in Tokyo and Executive Director at the Institute for HyperNetwork Society in Oita, Japan.
Izumi promoted the use of PC based network and the Internet since 1980s. In 1997, he founded Asia Network Research in Malaysia, focusing on societal aspects of the Internet, global governance and digital divide. In April 2000, he moved back to Tokyo. He represented Japanese NPO under the government’s requests at the Digital Opportunity Task Force from 2000 to 2002.
He has been participating in ICANN, WSIS and IGF as a member of the Civil Society. He served as the Co-Coordinator of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) from 2010 till 2012. He was also a member of the Working Group on IGF Improvement hosted by CSTD during the same period. He was also selected as a member of IGF Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) in 2012.
In 2004 he co-founded Internet Governance Task Force (IGTF) of Japan to engage in the debate on Internet Governance in the WSIS Working Group on Internet Governance.
In 2011, after the earthquake in Japan, he joined the relief works using ICTs and started the Information Support pro bono Platform, iSPP, a not-for-profit organization and became its Co-Chairperson. Mr. Aizu led a research project on “How people behaved with ICT” – and published a detailed statistical report and also co-authored a book published in March 2012.
His recent papers include “Beyond Network Neutrality” (Telecommunication Journal of Australia, 2009) and Japan Chapter of Global Information Society Watch (APC) under the theme of Content Regulation, Green ICT and Disaster and the use of ICT in 2009, 2010, 2011 respectively. He also contributed Japan chapter of the Freedom on the Net 2013 published by Freedom House.