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The 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of KAIST Commemoration Held
KAIST, aspiring to become the best Science and Technology University, has turned 40.
KAIST held the commemoration ceremony for the 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of KAIST in the auditorium.
Five awards (Scholar, Creative Lecture, Excellence in Lecture, International Cooperation, Experiment) were given to Professors Kim Eun Jun and Walton Jones (department of Biology), Professor Abigail Shin (department of Humanities and Social Sciences), Professor Shin Seong Chul (department of Physics), and Professor Lee Sang Yeop (department of Biological Chemical Engineering). Each recipient received a prize of five million won.
Professor Song Joon Hwa (department of Computer Sciences) received the ‘New Knowledge Award’ in recognition of his development of the Orchestrator Mobile platform. The new platform is different from Android or the IOS platform in that it allows a fluid relationship to be formed between the smartphone and the user.
KAIST also showed off its new emblem.
The emblem consists of a star which represents the KAIST’s goals of becoming the world leader, of training leaders, the center point, and hope. The main keywords are: ‘Leadership’, ‘Premium’, ‘Scientific’, and ‘Humanity’.
KAIST plans on having various events from May 9th when there will be the Vision Declaration.
2011.02.21 View 16573 -
KAIST Mobile Homepage Open
KAIST opened a mobile homepage (http://m.kaist.ac.kr) in order to provide an improved level of service to the public and KAIST family members.
The mobile homepage is made up of: notifications, KAIST news, cultural program guide, introduction of KAIST, campus map, undergraduate information, admission information, KAIST public relations pages.
Especially going into the KAIST public relations page and following ‘With-KAIST’ on twitter allows access to live feed of KAIST news and will be a good means of communications with the school and KAIST family members. This service was initiated on June of last year and has 559 followers.
The mobile homepage can be accessed on any smart phones like iPhone, Galaxy, etc.
Cho Joon Hyung IT Development Manger who was in charge of the development of the mobile homepage commented, “the mobile homepage was developed to meet the demand from smart phone users. Users will be able to access school related information heightening information accessibility”.
2011.02.21 View 8884
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KAIST establishes Indoor Location Recognition Industrial-Educational Research Center
KAIST has signed the memorandum of understanding on the 15th of February for the establishment of ‘KTNET-KAIST Industrial-Educational Research Center’ (Head of Center, Professor Han Dong Soo of department of Computer Sciences). Korea International Trade Association and KTNET will be working with KAIST to develop wi-fi based indoor location recognition service and applications of the developed technology.
The memorandum of understanding states that KTNET and Korea International Trade Association will be allowed access to the technology KAIST has in order to obtain competitive advantage in the field of location recognition.
In addition, KAIST will continue on making technological advances in the field of wi-fi based indoor location recognition for the next 5 years, develop new core technologies and applications, along with the export of related technologies abroad, under the support of the KITA and KTNET.
The KTNET-KAIST research center is special in that it has been derived off of the technology developed for the hosting of the G20 Global Summit. Last year, KAIST, KITA, and KTNET developed a wi-fi based Coex indoor navigation system and called it ‘myCoex’ and released it to the public in tandem with hosting G20 Summit.
‘myCoex’ application was the first of its kind in the world to provide wi-fi based indoor navigation system without problems. Despite ‘myCoex’ only useable within Coex, over 150,000 users have downloaded the application.
The research center plans on developing the necessary technology that will allow the application of such an app like ‘mCoex’ to large indoor spaces like Incheon International Airport, subway, shopping malls, and etc.
In addition the addition of a social commerce service to ‘myCoex’ is being looked into which will be the marriage of navigation services and social commerce services.
The KTNET KAIST research center will develop a wi-fi based indoor location recognition service platform that can be widely used and open it so that numerous other developers can develop personalized services.
Han Dong Soo Head od Center commented, “The wi-fi based indoor location recognition technology is still found wanting in its accuracy, response time, and energy consumption efficiency making further research imperative in this particular field. The establishment of KTNET-KAIST research center has created a research friendly environment and KAIST will do its utmost to become the leader in the field”.
2011.02.21 View 13454
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'Happy College Life' Course Established
The newly established course ‘happy college life’ is attracting attention.
The course is aimed at allowing freshmen to experience teamwork, community service, and other participatory activities to find meaning in life and have a happy time in college. The course was planned by sophomores who best understand the freshmen life.
It is a mandatory course for freshmen and is comprised of ‘Happy College Life’ I and II in the spring and fall semesters respectively.
950 Freshmen will be divided into 30 classes and will have class every Thursday from 7pm to 8pm.
The students will plan community service independently and execute them along with participating in sports competitions, special lectures, dorm parties, and singing competitions.
Professors in charge, dormitory deans and upperclassmen will be assigned to each class allowing understanding of freshmen to become easier thereby making it easier to meet the needs of the freshmen.
The Academic Advisor will be in charge of counseling and future vocation discussion along with the actual lecture itself. In addition, the teaching assistants will shorten the distance between the professor and the students and look over the students’ everyday life.
Resident Advisors consists of the admission interview committee members and will monitor the students they have admitted into KAIST and give advice in matters of vocation and relationships.
The upperclassmen who volunteered to become Proctors will live in the same dorms as the freshmen and give guidance on freshmen studies and lifestyle and will focus on being accessible to freshmen instead of being authoritative.
In addition, KAIST has established a freshmen support program in order to effectively help freshmen in matters of grades, college life, vocation, and etc. to make acclimatizing easier on the freshmen.
2011.02.21 View 9544
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Honorary Doctorate given to 5 Domestic and Foreign Figures
KAIST will be presenting doctor degrees to 5 domestic and foreign figures that have helped development of science and technology, society, and KAIST on the 11th of February.
The degrees will be awarded to Shirley Ann Jackson President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Mrs. Oh Lee Won, Chairman Cho Chun Shik, Jang Young Shin Chairman of Aekyung Group, and Kim Young Gil President of University of Han Dong.
President Jackson will be given the Honorary Science Technology Doctorate, Mrs. Oh Lee Won, Chairman Cho Chun Shik, Chairwoman Jang Young Shin, President Kim Young Gil will be given Honorary Management Doctorate degree.
President Shirley Ann Jackson is a brilliant physicists and has great managerial skills and leadership and has been the chairperson of Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Obama ministration’s Presidential Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with the president of the university, making great contribution to the development of science and technology and society.
President Jackson is the leading female science-engineer and has received honorary doctor degrees from 45 universities and is a proven world renowned and respected leader and scholar. She has made great impact in America and on the world in research findings as a physicist, public policies, and in terms of education.
Mrs. Oh Lee Won donated 10billion Won to KAIST with wishes that it be used as scholarship for the development of future leaders of Korea.
Mrs. Oh’s donation allowed KAIST to newly establish ‘Lee Won Assistant Professor System’ that encourages promising assistant professors to educate students and focus on research and allows KAIST to invite promising scientists.
With the new system in place, KAIST now has the foundations necessary to develop excellent scientific talents and future world leaders, giving it competitive advantage in becoming the best university in the world.
Chairman Cho Chun Shik donated his entire fortune believing that supporting the science community will improve the economy.
With the donations KAIST established the ‘Cho Chun Shik Green Transportation Graduate School’ thereby laying the foundations that will allow KAIST to tap into the rapidly growing high tech green transportation market by developing related technologies and experts in this field. This will allow KAIST to become the best university centered on fusion and compound studies.
Chairwoman Jang Young Shin is the first Korean woman CEO. She graduated from Gyoung Gi girl’s High School and majored in Chemistry in the University of Chesternut Hill. She started management in 1972 and overcame social prejudice and discrimination towards women and has made the small soap company into the Aekyung group with 20 subsidiaries.
Chairwoman Jang is currently director at KAIST. She is giving advice and encouragement so that KAIST can become the world’s best using her experiences as the vice president of the Korean Businessperson Federation and Korea Trade Federation.
Chairman Kim Young Gil has worked in NASA until he answered government’s call for help in 1979 and was made professor in the department of materials and science and engineering. He became the first president at Handong University in 1995 and has been making great effort to realize a ‘education based university’ for the development of students both academically and ethically competent.
He has implemented various educational experiments, like no major, no undergraduate studies, no affiliation, mandatory double major, no proctor tests, Asia’s first American system Law School, etc. These educational innovations are seen as the new beginning of a knowledge based society’s education of science and technology.
2011.02.21 View 10295
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Waking Up Is Hard to Do: Scientists have discovered a new mechanism in the core gears of the circadian clock.
The US News & World Report released an article (Feb. 18, 2011) on KAIST’s research collaboration with Northwestern University in the US to identify a gene that regulates the rhythm of a fruit fly’s circadian clock, which may be applied to explain human’s sleep-wake cycle. The research result was published February 17 in the journal Nature.
For the link of the US News & World Report article, please go to the following link:
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/waking-up-is-hard-to-do_print.html
2011.02.21 View 11610
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Korean researchers reveal new sea defense model by EurekAlert
The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, a peer review journal devoted to advancing the practice, science and art of modeling and simulation that relate to military and defense purposes.
The SAGE Publication that issues the journal released a press release on January 18, 2011, announcing that KAIST researchers in collaboration with other intuitions in Korea devised “improved methods to model underwater warfare, which could aid future decisions about weapons and defense purchases.” Details of the article follow below: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-01/sp-krr011811.php
2011.01.19 View 10269
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Rise of the mimic-bots that act like we do: Human-machine teamwork.
An online magazine, Technology Marketing Corporation, based in the UK published an article, dated January 8, 2011, on a robot research project led by Professor Jong-Hwan Kim from the Electrical Engineering Department. The article follows below:
Technology Marketing Corporation
[January 08, 2011]
Rise of the mimic-bots that act like we do Human-machine teamwork
(New Scientist Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Rise of the mimic-bots that act like we doA robot inspired by human mirror neurons can interpret human gestures to learn how it should actNow follow meA robot inspired by human mirror neurons can interpret human gestures to learn how it should actA HUMAN and a robot face each other across the room. The human picks up a ball, tosses it towards the robot, and then pushes a toy car in the same direction.
Confused by two objects coming towards it at the same time, the robot flashes a question mark on a screen. Without speaking, the human makes a throwing gesture. The robot turns its attention to the ball and decides to throw it back.
In this case the robot"s actions were represented by software commands, but it will be only a small step to adapt the system to enable a real robot to infer a human"s wishes from their gestures.
Developed by Ji-Hyeong Han and Jong-Hwan Kim at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, the system is designed to respond to the actions of the person confronting it in the same way that our own brains do. The human brain contains specialised cells, called mirror neurons, that appear to fire in the same way when we watch an action being performed by others as they do when we perform the action ourselves. It is thought that this helps us to recognise or predict their intentions.
To perform the same feat, the robot observes what the person is doing, breaks the action down into a simple verbal description, and stores it in its memory. It compares the action it observes with a database of its own actions, and generates a simulation based on the closest match.
The robot also builds up a set of intentions or goals associated with an action. For example, a throwing gesture indicates that the human wants the robot to throw something back. The robot then connects the action "throw" with the object "ball" and adds this to its store of knowledge.
When the memory bank contains two possible intentions that fit the available information, the robot considers them both and determines which results in the most positive feedback from the human?- a smile or a nod, for example. If the robot is confused by conflicting information, it can request another gesture from the human. It also remembers details of each interaction, allowing it to respond more quickly when it finds itself in a situation it has encountered before.
The system should allow robots to interact more effectively with humans, using the same visual cues we use. "Of course, robots can recognise human intentions by understanding speech, but humans would have to make constant, explicit commands to the robot," says Han. "That would be pretty uncomfortable."Socially intelligent robots that can communicate with us through gesture and expression will need to develop a mental model of the person they are dealing with in order to understand their needs, says Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. Using mirror neurons and humans" unique mimicking ability as an inspiration for building such robots could be quite interesting, he says.
Han now plans to test the system on a robot equipped with visual and other sensors to detect people"s gestures. He presented his work at the Robio conference in Tianjin, China, in December. nAs the population of many countries ages, elderly people may share more of their workload with robotic helpers or colleagues. In an effort to make such interactions as easy as possible, Chris Melhuish and colleagues at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK are leading a Europe-wide collaboration called Cooperative Human Robotic Interaction Systems that is equipping robots with software that recognises an object they are picking up before they hand it to a person. They also have eye-tracking technology that they use to monitor what humans are paying attention to. The goal is to develop robots that can learn to safely perform shared tasks with people, such as stirring a cake mixture as a human adds milk.
(c) 2011 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
2011.01.10 View 11875
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KAIST developed a plastic film board less sensitive to heat.
The research result was made the cover of magazine, Advanced Materials and is accredited to paving the way to commercialize flexible display screens and solar power cells.
Transparent plastic and glass cloths, which have a limited thermal expansion needed for the production of flexible display screens and solar power cells, were developed by Korean researchers.
The research, led by KAIST’s Professor Byoung-Soo Bae, was funded by the Engineering Research Center under the initiative of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation. The research result was printed as the cover paper of ‘Advanced Materials’ which is the leading magazine in the field of materials science.
Professor Bae’s team developed a hybrid material with the same properties as fiber glass. With the material, they created a transparent, plastic film sheet resistant to heat. Transparent plastic film sheets were used by researchers all over the world to develop devices such as flexible displays or solar power cells that can be fit into various living spaces. However, plastic films are heat sensitive and tend to expand as temperature increases, thereby making it difficult to produce displays or solar power cells.
The new transparent, plastic film screen shows that heat expansion index (13ppm/oC) similar to that of glass fiber (9ppm/oC) due to the presence of glass fibers; its heat resistance allows to be used for displays and solar power cells over 250oC.
Professor Bae’s team succeeded in producing a flexible thin plastic film available for use in LCD or AMOLED screens and thin solar power cells.
Professor Bae commented, “Not only the newly developed plastic film has superior qualities, compared to the old models, but also it is cheap to produce, potentially bringing forward the day when flexible displays and solar panels become commonplace. With the cooperation of various industries, research institutes and universities, we will strive to improve the existing design and develop it further.”
2011.01.05 View 16384 -
A KAIST student earns 500 million won with "Virtual Finger" idea.
A student’s small idea was transformed into a viable technology, yielding 500 million won through the technology transfer.
In a mobile environment, it is difficult to hold the device and use its multi touch function, at the same time. A doctorate candidate of the KAIST Cultural Technology Graduate School, Hwang Sung Jae (28 years old), identified the inconvenience that it is hard to see the full screen of a mobile phone while manipulating it, and he invented a helper called “Virtual Thumb.”
The thumb allows a user to use only one finger to perform tasks that require the movements of several fingers like punching, zooming in/out and rotating the screen. When the user touches a screen, a virtual finger is created on the other side of the screen and mimics the motion of the user’s touching.
The ‘virtual Finger’ technology is based on the idea that came in second in the 2009 Korea Invention Patent Competition hosted by the Korea Intellectual Property Office and can be applied to any device that has a touch-based system which spans from a TV remote controller to a Tablet PC’s.
The Office of University and Industry Cooperation, KAIST, facilitated to turn Hwang’s idea into commercialization, and on October 18, Victronix, a Korean mobile phone manufacturer, bought a patent right for the technology at 500 million won.
2010.12.13 View 10647 -
KAIST Student Earns Five Hundred Million Won on Virtual Thumb Idea.
Hwang Sung Jae, a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Cultural Technology, developed a Virtual Thumb technology that allows multi-touch functions with one hand. Hwang got his idea from limitations of current mobile phones, including the covering of the screen by the use of fingers and the fact that multi-touch functions are hard to perform with one hand holding the mobile phone.
With this technology, one finger gives the same effect of using both fingers to perform a function. Using the Virtual Thumb that appears on a point corresponding to the point of physical touch, movements corresponding to actual touch movements are mimed to allow zooming in/out and various rotation angle based functions.
In addition, in situations where object rotation is unnecessary, many functions are subjectively matched using the change in rotational angle. It allows for various commands are simultaneously executed without activating a separate commanding menu. In the case of the zoom in command at a corner region, the corner can be zoomed in without moving the object to the center of the screen.
The Virtual Thumb technology can be applied as a middleware on touch-based apparatus including TV remote controls, eBook, mobile phones, tablet PCs, navigation systems and educational apparatus.
“I am honored that a small idea that developed during research can be developed into an actual commercialized technology,” said Hwang. “I will become a researcher who will add to the academic and industrial fields through creative research in the future.”
2010.11.05 View 10265 -
Professor Bae of Industrial Design Wins Good Design Award.
Professor Bae Sang Min’s research team of the Industrial Design Department received a G-Mark on the Product Design Section from the Good Design Awards 2010 organized by the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization through the exhibition of a Green Sharing Project, Heartea.
Heartea is a tumbler that allows the user to easily know the temperature of the liquid contained inside. Heartea is a name that combines Heart and Tea to refer to a tumbler that contains heart-warming tea.
Heartea was designed and produced by Professor Bae’s research team and was funded by GS Caltex. World Vision selected charity targets and oversaw distribution, and all of the sales income (about 200 million won) was donated as a scholarship to teenagers with financial difficulties.
The project has begun in 2006, and its accumulative sales are 1.7 billion won. Twenty million won is donated to 147 teenagers every year as scholarship, and through annual sharing camp, social leaders mentor teenagers to help them achieve their dreams.
The Good Design Award organized annually by Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization has a fifty year tradition and is one of the world’s top four design contests with 6,000 submissions from 50 different countries participated.
Professor Bae’s team has won three of the top four design contests including the German Red Dot Product Award and the American IDEA Product Award.
Along with Heartea, both of foldable MP3 in 2008 and natural humidifier Lovepot in 2009 won an award from these four contests.
“Through continuous research, I hope to create the world’s best philanthropy design research center to help Third World countries and the neglected. I want to participate in creating a better world through design,” said Professor Bae.
2010.11.05 View 13535