Our SPS member Sadaoki Furui received the 63rd NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai: Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Broadcast Cultural Award on 22 March 2012 for his outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of automatic speech recognition technology which is now used in NHK’s closed captioning systems, as well as speaker recognition and multimedia search technology.  This is an Oscar-like award in Japan mainly focused on novelists, actors, actresses, musicians, entertainers, and artists, but traditionally a scientist/engineer contributed to broadcasting is also awarded among the six recipients every year.