Engineering
-
The 8th KINC Fusion Research Awardees
The KAIST Institute for NanoCentury held the 8th KINC Fusion Research Award in order to encourage professors’ convergence studies and instill students’ willingness to research. The award ceremony took place in the KI Building at KAIST on March 13.
The KINC Fusion Research Award selects the most outstanding convergence studies among research undertaken last year, and awards researchers who participated in that research.
The 8th KINC Fusion Research Award went to Professor Yoon Sung Nam from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor Inkyu Park from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Their research reported the spontaneous self-biomineralization of palladium (Pd) ions on a filamentous virus to form ligand-free Pd nanowires without reducing reagents or using additional surface stabilizers (Title: Virus-Templated Self-Mineralization of Ligand-Free Colloidal Palladium Nanostructures for High Surface Activity and Stability, Advanced Functional Materials (2017)).
Professor Hee-Tae Jung, the Director of KAIST Institute for the NanoCentury and the host of the KINC Fusion Research Award said, “Convergence will be the crucial keyword that will lead to revolutionary change. Hence, the importance of convergence study should be improved. We will put every effort into creating a research environment for increasing convergence study.
The KAIST Institute for the NanoCentury was established in June 2006 under the KAIST Institute with a mission of creating convergence study by tearing down boarders among departments and carrying out interdisciplinary joint research. Currently, approximately 90 professors from 14 departments participate the institute. It aims to become a hub of university institutes for nano-fusion research.
2018.03.19 View 10146 -
Seong-Tae Kim Wins Robert-Wagner All-Conference Best Paper Award
(Ph.D. candidate Seong-Tae Kim)
Ph.D. candidate Seong-Tae Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering won the Robert Wagner All-Conference Best Student Paper Award during the 2018 International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Medical Imaging Conference, which was held in Houston last month.
Kim, supervised by Professor Yong Man Ro, received the award for his paper in the category of computer-aided diagnosis. His paper, titled “ICADx: Interpretable Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Breast Masses”, was selected as the best paper out of 900 submissions. The conference selects the best paper in nine different categories. His research provides new insights on diagnostic technology to detect breast cancer powered by deep learning.
2018.03.15 View 8612 -
Recognizing Seven Different Face Emotions on a Mobile Platform
(Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo)
A KAIST research team succeeded in achieving face emotion recognition on a mobile platform by developing an AI semiconductor IC that processes two neural networks on a single chip.
Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo and his team (Primary researcher: Jinmook Lee Ph. D. student) from the School of Electrical Engineering developed a unified deep neural network processing unit (UNPU).
Deep learning is a technology for machine learning based on artificial neural networks, which allows a computer to learn by itself, just like a human.
The developed chip adjusts the weight precision (from 1 bit to 16 bit) of a neural network inside of the semiconductor in order to optimize energy efficiency and accuracy. With a single chip, it can process a convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) simultaneously. CNN is used for categorizing and recognizing images while RNN is for action recognition and speech recognition, such as time-series information.
Moreover, it enables an adjustment in energy efficiency and accuracy dynamically while recognizing objects. To realize mobile AI technology, it needs to process high-speed operations with low energy, otherwise the battery can run out quickly due to processing massive amounts of information at once. According to the team, this chip has better operation performance compared to world-class level mobile AI chips such as Google TPU. The energy efficiency of the new chip is 4 times higher than the TPU.
In order to demonstrate its high performance, the team installed UNPU in a smartphone to facilitate automatic face emotion recognition on the smartphone. This system displays a user’s emotions in real time. The research results for this system were presented at the 2018 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco on February 13.
Professor Yoo said, “We have developed a semiconductor that accelerates with low power requirements in order to realize AI on mobile platforms. We are hoping that this technology will be applied in various areas, such as object recognition, emotion recognition, action recognition, and automatic translation. Within one year, we will commercialize this technology.”
2018.03.09 View 6722 -
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: Between Reality and Virtuality
A workshop on blockchain and cryptocurrency, one of the 4th Industrial Revolution Workshop Series, was held at the KAIST main campus on March 7.
Experts from industry, academia, and research gathered and shared their opinions about blockchain technology, which is currently gaining huge attention along with cryptocurrency.
During the workshop, four KAIST professors and four experts from institutes and business examined the scope on the possibility of blockchain, technology for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Moreover, they discussed a variety of issues including mining, wallets, cryptocurrency, information security, smart contracts, and ICOs.
In a previous blockchain tutorial, Professor Yongdae Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST and Professor Hyoungshick Kim from Sungkyunkwan University opened up a blockchain tutorial which provided a technical understanding of blockchain, such as the birth of cryptocurrency, algorithm design, and exchange methods.
Professor Jungho Kim, who is in charge of this event, said, “This workshop will broaden the understanding of blockchain, which can provide a foundation for a national growth engine.”
2018.03.07 View 6651 -
Activation of Bystander Immune Cells during Acute Hepatitis A.
A KAIST research team has identified a process of tissue damage caused by bystander immune cells in acute viral infections. This research will pave the way for research to understand the principles of tissue damage in viral infections and immune diseases, and can point toward a possible therapeutic target for the treatment.
Upon viral infection, viral replication itself destroys human cells, but in some cases, viral replication is not the direct cause of the tissue damage. In particular, the destruction of infected cells is the primary cause of tissue damage during non-cytopathic viral infections such as hepatitis A virus, hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus. However, the underlying pathological mechanisms involved in the tissue damage during viral infections have not been fully elucidated.
Specificity is one of the most important characteristics of the immune system. In general, infection from a certain virus specifically activates immune cells targeting the virus, while other immune cells specific to different viruses remain inactive.
An immune cell not specific to an infected virus is called a bystander immune cell. A phenomenon that activates irrelevant immune cells not originally targeting the infecting virus, called the activation of bystander immune cells, is already known to the world; however, its clinical significance has not been investigated thoroughly.
Professor Eui-Cheol Shin and Professor Su-Hyung Park from the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering analyzed patients with acute hepatitis A, in collaboration with Chung-Ang University Hospital.
The team found not only immune cells specifically targeting the hepatitis A virus were activated, but also bystander immune cells were activated and involved in the damaging of liver tissues during acute hepatitis A.
According to the research, when a person is infected with hepatitis A virus, hepatitis A virus-infected cells produce IL-15, which induces the activation of bystander immune cells. Activated bystander immune cells exert innate-like cytotoxicity, triggered by activating receptors NKG2D and NKp30 and this can lead to liver injury.
Through describing the cause of excessive tissue damage during acute viral hepatitis, the research outcome is expected to provide critical contributions for the development of potential therapeutic intervention that can minimize tissue damage caused by viral hepatitis and immune disorders.
Professor Shin said, “This is a novel research case that discovered the clinical significance of bystander immune cell activation, which was previously unknown. We will continue to work on establishing treatments which could prevent tissue damage in viral and immune diseases in the future.”
This research was published in Immunity on January 2.
Figure 1. Graphical abstract
2018.03.06 View 6321 -
KAIST Professors Selected as Y-KAST Members
Professor YongKeun Park, Professor Bumjoon Kim, Professor Keon Jae Lee, and Professor Young Seok Ju were selected as the newest members of the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology (Y-KAST).
The Korean Academy of Science and Technology, an academic institution of professional experts, selected 26 promising scientists under the age of 43 to join Y-KAST. and four KAIST professors were included in the list.
The newest members were conferred on February 26.
Research Field
Name
Natural Sciences
YongKeun Park (Dept. of Physics)
Engineering
Bumjoon Kim (Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
Agricultural & Fishery Sciences
Keon Jae Lee (Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering)
Medical Sciences
Young Seok Ju (Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering)
2018.03.05 View 7906 -
Samsung Electronics' Chairman Kwon Becomes the First Alumnus Honorary Doctorate
(Samsung Electronics' Chairman & CEO Kwon,left, and President Shin)
The semiconductor has bred innovation in Korea, as one of the staples of economic growth. Without the success of the semiconductor industry of Korea, it is hard to imagine the high tech dominance in the global market enjoyed by Korean companies.
It is said that one in every four Ph.D.s working in the semiconductor industry of Korea graduated from KAIST. Among them, Chairman and CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon of Samsung Electronics, Class of 1977, has arrived at the epitome of this top industry.
KAIST’s class of 1977 produced many movers and shakers in Korea’s innovation efforts. Now in their mid-60s, they were the players who embodied Korea’s ICT and helped it become a global powerhouse. They are the ones who worked for and witnessed the socio-economic transformation of Korea through innovation.
In recognition of his unsurpassable entrepreneurship, which made the remarkable strides in the semiconductor and electronics industry in Korea and beyond, Chairman Kwon was honored as the first recipient of an honorary doctorate from his alma mater on February 23 during the 2018 commencement ceremony.
After completing his Master's in Electrical Engineering at KAIST in 1977, he earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. The first honorary degree bestowed to an alumnus was conferred by the first alumnus President of KAIST Sung-Chul Shin. President Shin said that Chairman Kwon’s exceptional leadership has inspired the KAIST community and exemplified the spirit of KAIST.
Currently serving as chairman & CEO of Samsung Electronics and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Kwon has worked for Samsung in a variety of key positions in their semiconductor division since 1985.
In the mid-1980s, Japan was leading the global semiconductor market. At Samsung, Chairman Kwon, who was in charge of the memory semiconductor team, successfully developed 4M DRAM. Later in 1992, he played a leading role in the development of the world’s first 64M DRAM.
The success of 4M DRAM and 64M DRAM led Samsung to clinch the top position in the DRAM and NAND flash business around the world. This helped Samsung emerge as a global leader in the semiconductor industry.
As a result, Samsung, as well as the national economy, could gain significant momentum to build national competitiveness and economic growth. The outstanding technological leadership of Chairman Kwon led to the development of proprietary semiconductor design and processes technologies as well as numerous patents.
He also played a leadership role in creating a mutual growth environment among conglomerates rather than merely engaging in direct competition. Chairman Kwon made every effort to establish the cornerstone of mutual growth, especially in relationships with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). His win-win collaboration initiatives among conglomerates and SMEs made a significant impact on the development of the entire industry of Korea.
In his acceptance speech, he charged the graduates to embrace challenges, to collaborate with peers, and create their own future.
The full text of his speech is printed below.
Graduates and distinguished guests! I extend my sincere congratulations to my fellow graduates, as you are awarded degrees for your deep efforts, as well as to the parents and family members who have supported you.
In 1977, I received my Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from KAIST. Today, as the first honorary doctor among KAIST graduates, I am truly honored to be here. I am deeply grateful to all of you, including President Sung-Chul Shin and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Jang-Moo Lee.
Today, I want to tell you about the experiences and lessons I have learned from my 40 years of corporate management experience.
First, you should lead and drive changes by yourself. In the process of realizing a dream, the situation and circumstances do not always proceed as you planned.
I started my career as a researcher. However, I had to continuously transform myself into a project leader, business team leader, and CEO. It was challenging every time, due to a lack of preparing and my insufficient ability. However, I have always accomplished the intended goal through the mindset of embracing changes and studying new things.
It is said that the survivors are not always the strongest nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are the most adaptive to changes. We can only be the last survivor if we have the character to see those small signs that signal changes are coming and cope with changes well. Take changes positively and actively and then, transform yourself to match a given situation.
In addition, it is important to understand others. When it comes to one’s career, there is nothing that you can do alone without the assistance of others. If it is not possible to do everything by yourself, you will need to supplement your efforts through the help of others. To do this, you need to understand your colleagues, bosses, and customers first.
People, who work in tech tend to cage themselves in their own silos. But in an era of destructive innovation, where boundaries of industries and technologies are collapsing at a breakneck pace, scientists also need to enhance their understanding of various areas such as culture, art, and the humanities.
This is a famous verse from a poem by Chun-Soo Kim.
Before I called his name,
He was nothing but a gesture.
When I called his name, He came to me and became a flower.
Make wonderful synergy by making your partner a flower and complementing each other. When you first notice the true value of another person and interact with them, the value of the individual will be doubled and will bring about a greater impact.
Finally, we all need to cooperate with each other. All of you here, including myself, are people who have benefited from society. We must cooperate with each other and give back to society for the best results.
A biologist once said that incremental evolution comes from competition, but fundamental evolution comes from cooperation. Great leaders should achieve results through cooperation rather than competition.
You are the future leaders with top-class knowledge. I hope you will become great leaders who have wisdom that combines external resources with your abilities.
Now, graduates of 2018 who are standing at the starting line, we often worry about an unpredictable tomorrow. However, the smartest way to predict the future is to create the future for ourselves. Moreover, we can try again even though we sometimes make mistakes. I urge you to make future you are hoping for.
Once again, I would like to thank you for this honorary doctorate and extend my sincere wishes for the endless development of KAIST and the best of luck to the futures of these graduates. Thank you.
2018.02.26 View 6992 -
Soul-Searching & Odds-Defying Determination: A Commencement Story of Dr. Tae-Hyun Oh
(Dr. Tae-Hyun Oh, one of the 2736 graduates of the 2018)
Each and every one of the 2,736 graduates has come a long way to the 2018 Commencement. Tae-Hyun Oh, who just started his new research career at MIT after completing his Ph.D. at KAIST, is no exception.
Unlike the most KAIST freshmen straight out of the ingenious science academies of Korea, he is among the many who endured very challenging and turbulent adolescent years. Buffeted by family instability and struggling during his time at school, he saw himself trapped by seemingly impenetrable barriers. His mother, who hated to see his struggling, advised him to take a break to reflect on who he is and what he wanted to do.
After dropping out of high school in his first year, ways to make money and support his family occupied his thoughts. He took on odd jobs from a car body shop to a gas station, but the real world was very tough and sometimes even cruel to the high school dropout.
Bias and prejudice stigmatizing dropouts hurt him so much. He often overheard a parent who dropped by the body shop that he worked in saying, “If you do not study hard, you will end up like this guy.” Hearing such things terrified him and awoke his sense of purpose. So he decided to do something meaningful and be a better man than he was.
“I didn’t like the person I was growing up to become. I needed to find myself and get away from the place I was growing up. It was my adventure and it was the best decision I ever made,” says Oh.
After completing his high school diploma national certificate, he planned to apply to an engineering college. On his second try, he gained admission into the Department of Electrical Engineering at Kwang Woon University with a full scholarship. He was so thrilled for this opportunity and hoped he could do well at college. Signal processing and image processing became the interest of his research and he finished his undergraduate degree summa cum laude.
Gaining confidence in his studies, he searched around graduate school department websites in Korea to select the path he was interested in. Among others, the Robotics and Computer Vision Lab of Professor In-So Kweon at the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST was attractive to him.
Professor Kweon’s lab is globally renowned for robot vision technology. Their technologies were applied into HUBO, the KAIST-developed bimodal humanoid robot that won the 2015 DARPA Challenges.
“I am so appreciate of Professor Kweon, who accepted and guided me,” he said. Under Professor Kweon’s advising, he could finish his Master’s and Ph.D. courses in seven years. The mathematical modeling on fundamental computer algorithms became his main research topic.
While at KAIST, his academic research has blossomed. He won a total of 13 research prizes sponsored by corporations at home and abroad such as Kolon, Samsung, Hyundai Motors, and Qualcomm.
In 2015, he won the Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship as the sole Korean among 13 Ph.D. candidates in the Asian region. With the MSRA fellowship, he could intern at the MS Research Beijing Office for half a year and then in Redmond, Washington in the US.
“Professor Kweon’s lab filled me up with knowledge. Whenever I presented our team’s paper at an international conference, I was amazed by the strong interest shown by foreign experts, researchers, and professors. Their strong support and interest encouraged me a lot. I was fully charged with the belief that I could go abroad and explore more opportunities,” he said.
Dr. Oh, who completed his dissertation last fall, now works at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT under Professor Wojciech Matusik.
“I think the research environment at KAIST is on par with MIT. I have very rich resources for my studies and research at both schools, but at MIT the working culture is a little different and it remains a big challenge for me. I am still not familiar with collaborative work with colleagues from very diverse backgrounds and countries, and to persuade them and communicate with them is very tough. But I think I am getting better and better,” he said.
Oh, who is an avid computer game player as well, said life seems to be a game. The level of the game will be upgraded to the next level after something is accomplished. He feels great joy when he is moving up and he believes such diverse experiences have helped him become a better person day by day. Once he identified what gave him a strong sense of purpose, he wasn’t stressed out by his studies any more. He was so excited to be able to follow his passion and is ready for the next challenge.
2018.02.23 View 9058 -
KAIST, First to Win the Cube Satellite Competition
Professor Hyochoong Bang from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and his team received the Minister of Science and ICT Award at the 1st Cube Satellite Competition.
The team actually participated in the competition in 2012, but it took several years for the awarding ceremony since it took years for the satellites to be designed, produced, and launched.
The KAIST team successfully developed a cube satellite, named ‘Little Intelligent Nanosatellite of KAIST (LINK)’ and completed its launch in April 2017.
LINK (size: 20cmx10cmx10cm, weight: 2kg) mounted mass spectrometry and Langmuir probe for Earth observation. The Langmuir probe was developed by Professor Kyoung Wook Min from the Department of Physics, KAIST.
Yeerang Lim, a PhD student from the Department of Aerospace Engineering said, “I still remember the feeling that I had on the day when LINK launched into orbit and sent back signals. I hope that space exploration is not something far away but attainable for us in near future.”
2018.02.22 View 9302 -
Low-power, Flexible Memristor Circuit for Mobile and Wearable Devices
(from left: Yunyong Nam, Professor Sung-Yool Choi and Byung Chul Jang)
A KAIST research team succeeded in developing an energy efficient, nonvolatile logic-in-memory circuit by using a memristor. This novel technology can be used as an energy efficient computing architecture for battery-powered flexible electronic systems, such as mobile and wearable devices.
Professor Sung-Yool Choi from the School of Electrical Engineering and Professor Sang-Hee Ko Park from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering developed a memristive nonvolatile logic-in-memory circuit.
Transistor-based conventional electronic systems have issues with battery supply and a long standby period due to their volatile computing architecture. The standby power consumption caused by subthreshold leakage current limits their potential applications for mobile electronic devices. Also, their physical separation of memory and processor causes power consumption and time delay during data transfer.
In order to solve this problem, the team developed a logic-in-memory circuit that enables data storage as well as logic operation simultaneously. It can minimize energy consumption and time delay because it does not require data transfer between memory and processor.
The team employed nonvolatile, polymer-based memristors and flexible back-to-back Schottky diode selector devices on plastic substrates. Unlike the conventional architecture, this memristive nonvolatile logic-in-memory is a novel computing architecture that consumes a minimal amount of standby power. This one-selector-one memristor (1S-1M) solved the issue of undesirable leakage currents, known as ‘sneak currents’.
They also implemented single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) to calculate multiple values at once.
The proposed parallel computing method using a memristive nonvolatile logic-in-memory circuit can provide a low-power circuit platform for battery-powered flexible electronic systems with a variety of potential applications.
Professor Choi said, “Flexible logic-in-memory circuits integrating memristor and selector device can provide flexibility, low power, memory with logic functions. This will be a core technology that will bring innovation to mobile and wearable electronic systems.”
This research, collaborated with Ph.D. candidates Byung Chul Jang and Yunyong Nam, was published and chosen as the cover of Advanced Functional Materials on January 10.
Figure 1. Cover of the Advanced Functional Materials
Figure 2. Schematic illustration and cross-sectional TEM image of flexible memristive nonvolatile logic-in-memory circuit
Figure 3. Test performance
Figure 4. Parallel logic operation within 1S-1M memristor array
2018.02.21 View 6321 -
Professor Il-Doo Kim Recevies the Song-gok Award
Professor Il-Doo Kim from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST received the 20th Song-gok Science and Technology Award from Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KSIT).
The Song-gok Science and Technology Award was established to praise the accomplishments of the first president, Hyung-seop Choi, whose penname is Song-gok. The award selects a recipient in the field of materials and technology every other year.
Professor Kim, in recognition of his outstanding research and contributions to materials science in Korea, received the award during the 52nd anniversary ceremony of KIST on February 9.
Professor Kim focuses on developing nanofiber gas sensors for diagnosing disease in advance by analyzing exhaled biomarkers with electrospinning technology.
He has published more than 211 papers and has recorded more than 9,650 citations and 50 h-index.
Professor Kim has registered 107 patents and applied 38 patents in Korea while registering 29 patents and applying 16 patents overseas. Also, he transferred four technologies in 2017.
Professor Kim is recognized as one of the researchers who is leading nanofiber technology. On January 17, he made a keynote speech at the 5th International Conference on Electrospinning, which was his fourth keynote speech at that conference.
Moreover, he received the Technology Innovation Award at the College of Engineering, KAIST on December 19, 2017.
Professor Kim said, “It is my great honor to receive the Song-gok Science and Technology Award. I would like to bring distinction to KAIST by taking the lead in the commercializing a nanofiber-based highly sensitive nanosensors, diversifying and commercializing technology using nanofiber.”
2018.02.13 View 7283 -
First Female Grand Prize Awardee of Samsung Humantech
Yeunhee Huh, PhD candidate (Professor Gyu-Hyeong Cho) from the School of Electrical Engineering received the grand prize of the 24th Humantech Paper Award. She is the first female recipient of this prize since its establishment in 1994. The Humantech Paper Award is hosted by Samsung Electronics and sponsored by the Ministry of Science and ICT with JoongAng Daily Newspaper. Her paper is titled, ‘A Hybrid Structure Dual-Path Step-Down Converter with 96.2％ Peak Efficiency using 250mΩ Large-DCR Inductor’. Electronic devices require numerous chips and have a power converter to supply energy adequately. She proposed a new structure to enhance energy efficiency by combining inductors and capacitors. Enhancing energy efficiency can reduce energy loss, which prolongs battery hours and solves overheating of devices; for instance, energy loss leads to the overheating issue affecting phone chargers. This technology can be applied to various electronic devices, such as cell phones, laptops, and drones. Huh said, “Power has to go up in order to meet customers’ needs; however the overheating problem emerges during this process. This problem affects surrounding circuits and causes other issues, such as malfunctions of electronic devices. This technology may vary according to the conditions, but it can enhance energy efficiency up to 4%.”During the ceremony, about eight hundred million KRW worth cash prizes was conferred to 119 papers. KAIST (44 papers) and Gyeonggi Science High School (6 papers) received special awards given to the schools.
2018.02.12 View 7573