A team of multiple award-winning, world-class Kagglers.
With so many experts here at Rist, we adopted a system that allows for participation in Kaggle activities during work, based on the performance in Kaggle competitions. These Kaggle competitions lead to the improvement of the data analysis team, and of Rist as a whole, and enable us to grow a deeper understanding and appreciation of our customers.
MEMBERS
Kaggle Grandmaster
Rist Data Analysis Team AdvisorKazuki Onodera
Worked on development of core banking systems after graduating from university. Following this, he helped develop an auditing model for financial institutions, while at the same time winning the runner-up prize in the KDD Cup 2015 data-mining contest hosted by ACM/KDD in 2015. In 2017, he would also win the runner-up prize for Kaggle’s Instacart Market Basket Analysis. Currently involved in development of RAPIDS as a Senior Deep Learning Data Scientist at Nvidia, and contributes as a practical business advisor at Rist to further advance the technical skills of the Kaggle team.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Hirokazu Takoi
Joined Rist in March 2020. He is experienced in data analysis for a wide range of industries, including finance, online commerce, manufacturing, and more. He is a passionate participant in a variety of data analysis competitions both within Japan and abroad and
He won a championship or being a runner-up,respectively.He currently develops predictive models via the Deep Analytics data analysis service.Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in August 2021.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Chen Jian
Joined Rist in April 2020. He has accumulated experience over a wide variety of data analysis competitions.Winner of the Kaggle competition "Sartorius - Cell Instance Segmentation" in January 2022 and "HuBMAP - Hacking the Human Vasculature" in August 2023.He is currently involved with the R&D for imaging AI systems centered on manufacturing.
Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in October 2021.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Satoshi Mifune
Joined Rist in February 2020. He took part in a wide variety of data analysis competitions during his previous position as a system developer. Runner-up in the 2019 SIGNATE Competition for “Iida Sangyo – Land Sale Price Prediction”, as well as grand prize winner of the CA x atmaCup, hosted by atma Co., Ltd. He currently develops predictive models via the Deep Analytics data analysis service.Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in November2022.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Keiichiro Ishi
Joined Rist in May 2021. After graduating from graduate school, he engaged in research and development of MRI sequences at a medical device manufacturer. After that, he was responsible of setting up a machine learning group at a printing press maker. He is currently involved in research and development of image-based AI systems centered on the manufacturing industry.
Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in March 2023.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Kohei Ozaki
D. program at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in 2014 with credits. He has experience in data analysis and research and development in various business areas including insurance, finance, and advertising. He has been active in numerous contests, starting with the KDD Cup 2015, in which he participated as a team. He is the author of the book "Kaggle ni idomu Deep Learning Programming no Gokui" (The Art of Deep Learning Programming for Kaggle) (Kodansha, co-authored).
Kaggle Grandmaster
Taiki Yamaguchi
Joined Rist in May 2024. In 2020, He completed his master's degree at Tokyo University, specializing in particle physics. After graduating, he worked at an AI venture, developing products that provide simulators using deep learning models and analyzing data in various fields. He was promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in 2021. As of May 2024, he has won first place twice and second place three times in Kaggle competitions. In 2023, he earned seven gold medals in a single year. Currently, he is engaged in research and product development, focusing on image AI technology in the manufacturing industry.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Shu Zhi Liu
He joined Rist in April 2021. During his college years, he was interested in developing image-based AI systems and participated in various projects as an intern at Rist. After graduation, he officially joined Rist and worked mainly in the field of robotics AI and reinforcement learning. Currently, he is involved in research and development of image-based AI systems with a focus on supporting the environmental sector of the manufacturing industry.
Promoted to Kaggle Master in March 2023 and joined the Rist Kaggle Team and Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in March 2023.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Katsuya Takenouchi
Joined Rist in February 2022. Experienced development of various image-based AI systems at Rist as an intern during his college years. After graduating from college, he worked in application development and data analysis for EC. At his previous job, he was in charge of building sales forecasting models. Currently, he is engaged in research and development of image-based AI systems mainly for the manufacturing industry.
Promoted to Kaggle Master in March 2023 and joined the Rist Kaggle Team and Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in March 2023.
Kaggle Grandmaster
Koki Nikaido
Joined Rist in September 2022. After graduating from university, he worked in software development for consumer cameras. In his previous job, he was in charge of data analysis/model development for sound such as anomalous sound detection. He currently develops predictive models via the Deep Analytics data analysis service.
Promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster in December2024.
Kaggle Master
Yusuke Fujimoto
Joined Rist in May 2020. He worked on the development of financial systems before going on to work as a research assistant in personal information anonymization and in database performance tuning. In his previous position, he managed the R&D of medical imaging AI. He is currently involved with the R&D for imaging AI systems centered on manufacturing.
Kaggle Master
Hiroyuki Kambe
Joined Rist in November 2022. After graduating from graduate school, he worked on projects and R&D related to natural language processing at a SIer company and an AI startup company.
He has experience in AI projects such as recommendation systems, information extraction from unstructured text, and automatic scoring of written questions.
In 2021, he was a runner-up in Kaggle's chaii - Hindi and Tamil Question Answering.
Currently, he is involved in image-based projects, mainly in the manufacturing industry.
There are many more Kaggle Experts in the team, with each of them continuing to improve their skills through a combination of participating in their daily work, competitions, and workshops.
Achievement
- Total 147
- Gold 76
- Silver 51
- Bronze 20
*The medals are all for Kaggle competitions, and show the total number of medals held by each member of the Rist Kaggle Team.
- July 2025
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen has won the gold medal in the Kaggle competition, "Yale/UNC-CH – Geophysical Waveform Inversion".
- June 2025
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the gold medal in the Kaggle competition, "BirdCLEF+ 2025".
- June 2025
A team of Kaggle Grandmasters Takenouchi, Chen, and Liu has won the gold medal in the Kaggle competition, "Drawing with LLMs".
- June 2025
A team with Kaggle Grandmaster Ozaki has won the gold medal in the Kaggle competition, "Image Matching Challenge 2025".
- April 2025
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen and A team with Kaggle Grandmaster Yamaguchi have won the gold medal in the Kaggle competition, "AI Mathematical Olympiad – Progress Prize 2".
- April 2025
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen has won the gold medal in the Kaggle competition, "WSDM Cup – Multilingual Chatbot Arena".
- December 2024
Kaggle Grandmaster Nikaido has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition "Child Mind Institute — Problematic Internet Use".
- December 2024
A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi and Yamaguchi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"Eedi – Mining Misconceptions in Mathematics"; Kaggle Grandmaster Chen has won the silver medal.
- December 2024
Kaggle Grandmaster Ozaki has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"UM - Game-Playing Strength of MCTS Variants";A team including Tsuji has won the gold medal.
- September 2024
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Mifune and Fukushima has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"LLM 20 Questions".
- August 2024
A team of Kaggle Grandmasters Chen, Liu and Takenouchi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"LMSYS – Chatbot Arena Human Preference Predictions".
- August 2024
A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition "LEAP – Atmospheric Physics using AI (ClimSim)"; A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Mifune and Kaggle Master Nikaido win the gold medal ;A team of Kaggle Grandmasters Ozaki, Yamaguchi and Ishi has won the silver medal ;A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Onodera has won the silver medal.
- July 2024
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"Learning Agency Lab – Automated Essay Scoring 2.0".
- June 2024
Kaggle Master Takenouchi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"BirdCLEF 2024".
- May 2024
A team of Kaggle Grandmasters Takoi and Yamaguchi has won the silver medal in Kaggle Competition "Home Credit - Credit Risk Model Stability"; Kaggle Grandmaster Ozaki has won the bronze medal.
- May 2024
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition "Enefit - Predict Energy Behavior of Prosumers"; Kaggle Master Nikaido has won the silver medal.
- April 2024
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"The Learning Agency Lab - PII Data Detection"; A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi and Kaggle Master Kanbe has won the bronze medal.
- April 2024
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Ishi, Kaggle Master Nikaido and Tsuji has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"HMS - Harmful Brain Activity Classification"; Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the silver medal, A team of Kaggle Masters Liu and takenouchi has won the silver medal.
- February 2024
Kaggle Master Liu has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"SenNet + HOA - Hacking the Human Vasculature in 3D";A team of Kaggle Grandmasters Onodera, Ozaki and Kaggle Master Fujimoto has won the silver medal ; Kaggle Master Takenouchi has won the bronze medal.
- January 2024
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Chen,Kaggle Master Liu and takenouchi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"UBC Ovarian Cancer Subtype Classification and Outlier Detection (UBC-OCEAN)".
- December 2023
A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Onodera has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"Stanford Ribonanza RNA Folding".
- December 2023
A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Mifune has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"Child Mind Institute - Detect Sleep States";Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi and Ozaki have won the silver medal ;A team of Onodera and Ishi has won the silver medal ;A team including Kaggle Master Nikaido has won the silver medal.
- October 2023
A teams of Kaggle Grandmasters Onodera, Ozaki and Kaggle Master Nikaido has won the silver medal in Kaggle Competition "Bengali.AI Speech Recognition".
- October 2023
A team of Kaggle Master Liu and takenouchi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"RSNA 2023 Abdominal Trauma Detection"; Kaggle Grandmaster Ishi has won the silver medal
- October 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"CommonLit – Evaluate Student Summaries";Kaggle Grandmaster Ozaki has won the silver medal ;A team including Kaggle master Kanbe has won the silver medal.
- August 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the silver medal in Kaggle Competition"ICR - Identifying Age-Related Conditions".
- August 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition”Google Research - Identify Contrails to Reduce Global Warming” ,A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Onodera and Ishi has won the silver medal.
- August 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen was runner up in Kaggle Competition"HuBMAP - Hacking the Human Vasculature" ,A team of Kaggle Master Liu and Takenouchi has won the silver medal and Kaggle Master Fujimoto has won the bronze medal.
- July 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"Predict Student Performance from Game Play".
- June 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Ishi &Kaggle Master Takenouchi and liu have won the silver medal in Kaggle Competition"Benetech - Making Graphs Accessible".
- June 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Ozaki has won the gold medal in Kaggle Competition"Image Matching Challenge 2023".
- June 2023
The team including Kaggle Grandmaster Hirokazu Takoi was the runner-up in Kaggle Competition "Parkinson’s Freezing of Gait Prediction".
A team including Kaggle Master Nikaido has won the silver medal. - May 2023
Kaggle Master Nikaido has won the silver medal in Kaggle Competition"BirdCLEF 2023".
- April 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Mifune has won the Gold medal in Kaggle Competition"March Machine Learning Mania 2023".
- March 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the silver medal in Kaggle Competition"Learning Equality - Curriculum Recommendations".
Kaggle Grandmaster Ozaki and Kaggle Master Kanbe have won the bronze medal.
- March 2023
The team including Kaggle Master Nikaido has won the Gold Medal in Kaggle Competition "1st and Future - Player Contact Detection"; A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Onodera has won the Silver Medal.
- March 2023
A team of Liu and takenouchi was the runner-up in "RSNA Screening Mammography Breast Cancer Detection"; A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Ishi has won the Gold Medal.
- February 2023
Kaggle Grandmaster Onodera was the runner-up in "OTTO – Multi-Objective Recommender System"; A team including Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the Silver Medal
- December 2022
Kaggle Grandmaster Takoi has won the Gold Medal in Kaggle Competition "Feedback Prize - English Language Learning"; A team including Kaggle Master Kambe has won the Gold Medal.
- November 2022
Mifune wins solo gold medal in "Open Problems - Multimodal Single-Cell Integration" and is promoted to Kaggle Grandmaster.
- August 2022
Kaggle Grandmaster Chen's team has won the gold medal in the "Feedback Prize - Predicting Effective Arguments".
- July 2022
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Takumi Okoshi and Kaggle Grandmaster Jian Chen and Kaggle Master Yusuke Fujimoto and Kaggle Master Keiichiro Ishi was the runner up in “UW-Madison GI Tract Image Segmentation”.
- July 2022
The team including Kaggle Grandmaster Hirokazu Takoi was the runner up in "Foursquare - Location Matching".
- July 2022
The team including Kaggle Grandmaster Kazuki Onodera has won the gold medal in "Foursquare - Location Matching".
- July 2022
Kaggle Master Satoshi Mifune has won the silver medal in "Foursquare - Location Matching".
- July 2022
Kaggle Master Satoshi Mifune has won the silver medal in "Ubiquant Market Prediction".
- May 2022
The team including Kaggle Grandmaster Hirokazu Takoi has won the gold medal in "NBME – Score Clinical Patient Notes".
- May 2022
The team including Kaggle Grandmaster Kazuki Onodera has won the gold medal in "H&M Personalized Fashion Recommendations".
- April 2022
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Takumi Okoshi and Kaggle Grandmaster Jian Chen and Kaggle Master Keiichiro Ishi has won the runner up in “Happywhale – Whale and Dolphin Identification”.
- March 2022
The team including Kaggle Grandmaster Hirokazu Takoi has won the gold medal in "Feedback Prize – Evaluating Student Writing".
- March 2022
Kaggle Grandmaster Jian Chen has won the gold medal in "Feedback Prize – Evaluating Student Writing".
- January 2022
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Kazuki Onodera and Kaggle Master Yusuke Fujimoto and Keiichiro Ishi has won the gold medal in "PetFinder.my – Pawpularity Contest".
- December 2021
A team of Kaggle Grandmaster Takumi Okoshi and Jian Chen has won the grand prize in the "Sartorius – Cell Instance Segmentation" competition.
- November 2021
Kaggle Grandmaster Hirokazu Takoi has won the gold medal in "Google Brain – Ventilator Pressure Prediction".
- October 2021
Kaggle Grandmaster Takumi Okoshi and Jian Chen have won the gold medal in "Google Landmark Retrieval 2021".
- August 2021
Kaggle Grandmaster Hirokazu Takoi was runner up in “CommonLit Readability Prize”.
- July 2021
Kaggle Master Keiichiro Ishi ranked 1st at the #11 atmaCup, followed by Kaggle Grandmaster Takumi Okoshi with the 3rd place.
- May 2021
Kaggle Master Jian Chen has won the gold medal in "HuBMAP – Hacking the Kidney".
- May 2021
A team with Kaggle Masters Satoshi Mifune and Hirokazu Takoi has won the gold medal in "Indoor Location & Navigation".
- May 2021
Kaggle Grandmaster Kazuki Onodera has won the gold medal in "Human Protein Atlas – Single Cell Classification".
- April 2021
Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi has won the bronze medal in "March Machine Learning Mania 2021 - NCAAM".
- February 2021
Kaggle Master Jian Chen has won the gold medal in "Cassava Leaf Disease Classification".
- January 2021
Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi has won the gold medal in "Riiid! Answer Correctness Prediction".
- December 2020
Kaggle Master Satoshi Mifune has won the gold medal in "Google Research Football with Manchester City F.C."
- November 2020
Kaggle Grandmaster Takumi Okoshi won the #7 CA x atmaCup, and Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi was the runner-up.
- October 2020
Kaggle Grandmaster Kazuki Onodera was the runner-up in “OpenVaccine: COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Degradation Prediction”. Kaggle Master Satoshi Mifune and Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi have won the silver medal.
- August 2020
Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi has won the bronze medal in SIIM-ISIC Melanoma Classification.
- July 2020
The team including Kaggle Master Yusuke Fujimoto came in 1st out of 1,028 teams in the Prostate cANcer graDe Assessment (PANDA) Challenge.
- July 2020
Kaggle Master Chen Jian has won the silver medal in ALASKA2 Image Steganalysis.
- June 2020
Kaggle Grandmaster Kazuki Onodera was the runner-up in the "TReNDS Neuroimaging" competition.
A team including Kaggle Masters Takoi and Mifune finished in 5th place, winning the gold medal. - June 2020
Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi has won the atmaCup #5.
- June 2020
Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi has won the silver medal in M5 Forecasting – Accuracy.
- June 2020
Kaggle Expert Masato Umakoshi has won the bronze medal in Jigsaw Multilingual Toxic Comment Classification.
- June 2020
Kaggle Expert Masato Umakoshi has won the silver medal in Tweet Sentiment Extraction.
- May 2020
Kaggle Master Hirokazu Takoi has won the silver medal in University of Liverpool – Ion Switching.
About the Rist Kaggle Team System
The Rist Kaggle Team System is a system that lets each Rist Kaggle Team use their Rist work hours to join a Kaggle competition, up to a maximum amount of time calculated according to their internal Rist Kaggle Team rank.
Rist’s Internal Kaggle Team Rank
Points have been set up for each category based on indicators for Rank and Participation Type. Ranks are determined according to the number of points earned within a set period.
- Ranks (total of 5)
1st Place, 2nd Place, 3rd Place, Gold, Silver - Participation Type (total of 4)
Solo, Internal Team (less than 3 people), Internal Team (less than 4), Internal Team*
* A team with one Rist or more employees and team members from another company.
| Rank | Conditions of Employment | Conditions for annual renewal (example) |
|---|---|---|
| RankSKaggle Work Ratio 50% | Kaggle Grandmaster |
|
| RankA+Kaggle Work Ratio 40% |
|
|
| RankAKaggle Work Ratio 30% | Kaggle Master |
|
Activities
During routine internal workshops, team members work on past competition themes and share their knowledge.
Team members build up a diverse portfolio of industry expertise by participating in data analysis competitions and putting their imagination and passion to good use.
Formula for Calculating Kaggle Time
Monthly Kaggle time is calculated based on a ratio set by internal rank on the Kaggle team.
Rist work days/month✕standard hours (8 hr/day)
✕Work ratio based on Kaggle rank
Example: for 20 work days at Rist per month
※We also provide support for GPU servers and other computing resources.