CAS
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PICASSO Technique Drives Biological Molecules into Technicolor
The new imaging approach brings current imaging colors from four to more than 15 for mapping overlapping proteins
Pablo Picasso’s surreal cubist artistic style shifted common features into unrecognizable scenes, but a new imaging approach bearing his namesake may elucidate the most complicated subject: the brain. Employing artificial intelligence to clarify spectral color blending of tiny molecules used to stain specific proteins and other items of research interest, the PICASSO technique, allows researchers to use more than 15 colors to image and parse our overlapping proteins.
The PICASSO developers, based in Korea, published their approach on May 5 in Nature Communications.
Fluorophores — the staining molecules — emit specific colors when excited by a light, but if more than four fluorophores are used, their emitted colors overlap and blend. Researchers previously developed techniques to correct this spectral overlap by precisely defining the matrix of mixed and unmixed images. This measurement depends on reference spectra, found by identifying clear images of only one fluorophore-stained specimen or of multiple, identically prepared specimens that only contain a single fluorophore each.
“Such reference spectra measurement could be complicated to perform in highly heterogeneous specimens, such as the brain, due to the highly varied emission spectra of fluorophores depending on the subregions from which the spectra were measured,” said co-corresponding author Young-Gyu Yoon, professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST. He explained that the subregions would each need their own spectra reference measurements, making for an inefficient, time-consuming process. “To address this problem, we developed an approach that does not require reference spectra measurements.”
The approach is the “Process of ultra-multiplexed Imaging of biomolecules viA the unmixing of the Signals of Spectrally Overlapping fluorophores,” also known as PICASSO. Ultra-multiplexed imaging refers to visualizing the numerous individual components of a unit. Like a cinema multiplex in which each theater plays a different movie, each protein in a cell has a different role. By staining with fluorophores, researchers can begin to understand those roles.
“We devised a strategy based on information theory; unmixing is performed by iteratively minimizing the mutual information between mixed images,” said co-corresponding author Jae-Byum Chang, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, KAIST. “This allows us to get away with the assumption that the spatial distribution of different proteins is mutually exclusive and enables accurate information unmixing.”
To demonstrate PICASSO’s capabilities, the researchers applied the technique to imaging a mouse brain. With a single round of staining, they performed 15-color multiplexed imaging of a mouse brain. Although small, mouse brains are still complex, multifaceted organs that can take significant resources to map. According to the researchers, PICASSO can improve the capabilities of other imaging techniques and allow for the use of even more fluorophore colors.
Using one such imaging technique in combination with PICASSO, the team achieved 45-color multiplexed imaging of the mouse brain in only three staining and imaging cycles, according to Yoon.
“PICASSO is a versatile tool for the multiplexed biomolecule imaging of cultured cells, tissue slices and clinical specimens,” Chang said. “We anticipate that PICASSO will be useful for a broad range of applications for which biomolecules’ spatial information is important. One such application the tool would be useful for is revealing the cellular heterogeneities of tumor microenvironments, especially the heterogeneous populations of immune cells, which are closely related to cancer prognoses and the efficacy of cancer therapies.”
The Samsung Research Funding & Incubation Center for Future Technology supported this work. Spectral imaging was performed at the Korea Basic Science Institute Western Seoul Center.
-PublicationJunyoung Seo, Yeonbo Sim, Jeewon Kim, Hyunwoo Kim, In Cho, Hoyeon Nam, Yong-Gyu Yoon, Jae-Byum Chang, “PICASSO allows ultra-multiplexed fluorescence imaging of spatiallyoverlapping proteins without reference spectra measurements,” May 5, Nature Communications (doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30168-z)
-ProfileProfessor Jae-Byum ChangDepartment of Materials Science and EngineeringCollege of EngineeringKAIST
Professor Young-Gyu YoonSchool of Electrical EngineeringCollege of EngineeringKAIST
2022.06.22 View 7464 -
AI Weather Forecasting Research Center Opens
The Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in collaboration with the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences (NIMS) under the National Meteorological Administration launched the AI Weather Forecasting Research Center last month.
The KAIST AI Weather Forecasting Research Center headed by Professor Seyoung Yoon was established with funding from from the AlphaWeather Development Research Project of the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences. KAIST was finally selected asas the project facilitator.
AlphaWeather is an AI system that utilizes and analyzes approximately approximately 150,000 ,000 pieces of weather information per hour to help weather forecasters produce accurate weather forecasts. The research center is composed of three research teams with the following goals: (a) developdevelop AI technology for precipitation nowcasting, (b) developdevelop AI technology for accelerating physical process-based numerical models, and (c) develop dAI technology for supporting weather forecasters. The teams consist of 15 staff member members from NIMS and 61 researchers from the Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI at KAIST.
The research center is developing an AI algorithm for precipitation nowcasting (with up to six hours of lead time), which uses satellite images, radar reflectivity, and data collected from weather stations. It is also developing an AI algorithm for correcting biases in the prediction results from multiple numerical models. Finally, it is Finally, it is developing AI technology that supports weather forecasters by standardizing and automating repetitive manual processes. After verification, the the results obtained will be used by by the Korean National Weather Service as a next-generation forecasting/special-reporting system intelligence engine from 2026.
2022.01.10 View 4883 -
Professor Jihee Kim Wins the Lucas Prize for Her Income Inequality Theory
Professor Jihee Kim from the School of Business and Technology Management at KAIST was announced as one of two winners of the 2021 Robert E. Lucas Jr. Prize. Professor Kim was recognized for having provided an empirical analysis on engines of income growth, sources of income inequality, and their rich interplay in her paper published in the Journal of Political Economy (JPE) in October 2018. The co-author of this study, Professor Charles I. Jones at Stanford University, was honored to be another awardee of this year’s Lucas Prize.
The Robert E. Lucas Jr. Prize, simply known as the Lucas Prize, is awarded biannually for the most interesting paper in the area of Dynamic Economics published in the leading economics journal JPE in the preceding two years. The prize was established in 2016 in celebration of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Economics Laureate Dr. Lucas’s seminal contributions to economics. The two former prizes were presented in 2019 and 2017 respectively.
Professor Kim and Professor Jones, in their award-winning paper titled 'A Schumpeterian Model of Top Income Inequality', observed that top income inequality was relatively low and stable between 1960 and 1980, but then rose sharply in some countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
The authors focused on entrepreneurial activities and the resulting income as the driving force of income inequality. They assumed that the forces that increased the efforts of fast-growing entrepreneurs to improve their products or increased productivity of their efforts could increase income inequality. On the other hand, the forces that enhanced creative destruction or that raised the rate at which high-growth entrepreneurs lost that status could decrease income inequality, according to the authors’ theory.
Professor Kim explained, “Various economic forces due to globalization, the advancement in AI and IT technologies, taxes, and policies related to innovation blocking may explain the varied patterns in income inequality.”
“Through follow-up research, I will continue developing economic theory models that can analyze the impact of changes such as income tax rates and salary negotiations on income inequality,” she added.
Professor Kim received her bachelor’s degree from the KAIST School of Computing in 2005 and pursued her graduates studies at Stanford University, acquiring a master’s degree in economics in 2011 and a doctoral degree in management science and engineering in 2013.
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2021.03.26 View 7144 -
Sturdy Fabric-Based Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Takes Us One Step Closer to Wearable Electronics
KAIST researchers presented a highly flexible but sturdy wearable piezoelectric harvester using the simple and easy fabrication process of hot pressing and tape casting. This energy harvester, which has record high interfacial adhesion strength, will take us one step closer to being able to manufacture embedded wearable electronics.
A research team led by Professor Seungbum Hong said that the novelty of this result lies in its simplicity, applicability, durability, and its new characterization of wearable electronic devices.
Wearable devices are increasingly being used in a wide array of applications from small electronics to embedded devices such as sensors, actuators, displays, and energy harvesters.
Despite their many advantages, high costs and complex fabrication processes remained challenges for reaching commercialization. In addition, their durability was frequently questioned. To address these issues, Professor Hong’s team developed a new fabrication process and analysis technology for testing the mechanical properties of affordable wearable devices.
For this process, the research team used a hot pressing and tape casting procedure to connect the fabric structures of polyester and a polymer film. Hot pressing has usually been used when making batteries and fuel cells due to its high adhesiveness. Above all, the process takes only two to three minutes.
The newly developed fabrication process will enable the direct application of a device into general garments using hot pressing just as graphic patches can be attached to garments using a heat press.
In particular, when the polymer film is hot pressed onto a fabric below its crystallization temperature, it transforms into an amorphous state. In this state, it compactly attaches to the concave surface of the fabric and infiltrates into the gaps between the transverse wefts and longitudinal warps. These features result in high interfacial adhesion strength. For this reason, hot pressing has the potential to reduce the cost of fabrication through the direct application of fabric-based wearable devices to common garments.
In addition to the conventional durability test of bending cycles, the newly introduced surface and interfacial cutting analysis system proved the high mechanical durability of the fabric-based wearable device by measuring the high interfacial adhesion strength between the fabric and the polymer film. Professor Hong said the study lays a new foundation for the manufacturing process and analysis of wearable devices using fabrics and polymers.
He added that his team first used the surface and interfacial cutting analysis system (SAICAS) in the field of wearable electronics to test the mechanical properties of polymer-based wearable devices. Their surface and interfacial cutting analysis system is more precise than conventional methods (peel test, tape test, and microstretch test) because it qualitatively and quantitatively measures the adhesion strength.
Professor Hong explained, “This study could enable the commercialization of highly durable wearable devices based on the analysis of their interfacial adhesion strength. Our study lays a new foundation for the manufacturing process and analysis of other devices using fabrics and polymers. We look forward to fabric-based wearable electronics hitting the market very soon.”
The results of this study were registered as a domestic patent in Korea last year, and published in Nano Energy this month. This study has been conducted through collaboration with Professor Yong Min Lee in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at DGIST, Professor Kwangsoo No in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, and Professor Seunghwa Ryu in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST.
This study was supported by the High-Risk High-Return Project and the Global Singularity Research Project at KAIST, the National Research Foundation, and the Ministry of Science and ICT in Korea.
-Publication:
Jaegyu Kim, Seoungwoo Byun, Sangryun Lee, Jeongjae Ryu, Seongwoo Cho, Chungik Oh, Hongjun Kim, Kwangsoo No, Seunghwa Ryu, Yong Min Lee, Seungbum Hong*, Nano Energy 75 (2020), 104992.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.104992
-Profile: Professor Seungbum Hong
seungbum@kaist.ac.kr
http://mii.kaist.ac.kr/
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
KAIST
2020.09.17 View 12115 -
Professor Ji-Hyun Lee Awarded the Sasada Prize
Professor Ji-Hyun Lee from the Graduate School of Culture Technology was awarded the Sasada Prize during the 24th annual Conference of Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) held in Wellington, New Zealand on April 15.
The Sasada Award honors the late Professor Tsuyoshi Sasada (1941-2005), the former Professor of Osaka University and co-founder and fellow of CAADRIA. It is given to an individual who has contributed to the next generation of researchers and academics, to the wider profession and practice in computer-aided design and research, and has earned recognition in the academic community.
Professor Lee was recognized for her development of CAAD (Computer-Aided Architectural Design) through her research work on the land price precision system using case-based reasoning. Her research team proposed a model for estimating the average apartment price in an administrative district after collecting 40 variables from the six major Korean cities, excluding Seoul and Ulsan. Their follow-up studies showed the possibility of replacing existing experts’ predictions.
Professor Lee has been steadily researching for 20 years on case-based reasoning (CBR), a field of artificial intelligence, and has published more than 40 papers in the field of CBR. Meanwhile, the CAAD Future 2019 event will be held at KAIST in June.
2019.04.23 View 5615 -
Distinguished Professor Lee Named International Fellow of the CAS
Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST was awarded the title of distinguished professor and international fellow from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and honorary professor from its affiliated organization the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (TIB).
The CAS recognized Distinguished Professor Lee for his significant contributions to biotechnology. He has made significant pioneering academic achievements in the area of systems metabolic engineering, which produces useful chemicals from microorganisms. Not only did he develop the first and best source technology in that field, but also came out with processes for the production of biofuel and environmentally-friendly chemicals.”
As a global leader in systems metabolic engineering, Distinguished Professor Lee has also been appointed as an honorary professor at Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China.
Distinguished Professor Lee was listed in the ‘Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014’ selected by the renowned international journal Nature Biotechnology. Moreover, he was the first Asian recipient of the James E. Bailey Award in 2016 and Marvin J. Johnson Award in 2012, which are given to scholars in the field of biotechnology.
He is also one of 13 global scientists who are foreign members of the renowned academic societies the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences in the US. Furthermore, he received the ‘2017 Korea Best Scientist Award’ from the president of Korea in July. Finally, his founding field, systems metabolic engineering, was chosen as one of the ‘Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016’ by the World Economic Forum.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences, established in November 1949, is an academic organization that carries out research on basic sciences and natural sciences in China. It defined its science and technology system to include the fields of basic sciences, natural sciences, and high technology. While having a base in Beijing, its branch academies are located in 12 main cities along with 117 affiliates and 100 national key labs.
2017.10.26 View 9807 -
KAIST AI Academy for LG CNS Employees
The Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (Graduate School of Knowledge Service Engineering) at KAIST has collaborated with LG CNS to start a full-fledged KAIST AI Academy course after the two-week pilot course for employees of LG CNS, a Korean company specializing in IT services.
Approximately 100 employees participated in the first KAIST AI Academy course held over two weeks from August 24 to September 1. LG CNS is planning to enroll a total of 500 employees in this course by the end of the year.
Artificial intelligence is widely recognized as essential technology in various industries. In that sense, the KAIST AI Academy course was established to reinforce both the AI technology and the business ability of the company. In addition, it aims at leading employees to develop new business using novel technologies. The main contents of this course are as follows: i) discussing AI technology development and its influence on industries; ii) understanding AI technologies and acquiring the major technologies applicable to business; and iii) introducing cases of AI applications and deep learning.
During the course, seven professors with expertise in AI deep learning from the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (Graduate School of Knowledge Service Engineering), including Jae-Gil Lee and Jinkyoo Park will be leading the class, including practical on-site educational programs.
Based on the accumulated business experience integrated with the latest AI technology, LG CNS has been making an effort to find new business opportunities to support companies that are hoping to make digital innovations.
The company aims to reinforce the AI capabilities of its employees and is planning to upgrade the course in a sustainable manner. It will also foster outside manpower by expanding the AI education to its clients who pursue manufacturing reinforcement and innovation in digital marketing.
Seong Wook Lee, the Director of the AI and Big Data Business Unit said, “As AI plays an important role in business services, LG CNS decided to open the KAIST AI Academy course to deliver better value to our clients by incorporating our AI-based business cases and KAIST’s up-to-date knowledge.”
2017.09.06 View 6677 -
Professor Shin's Team Receives the Best Software Defined Network Solution Showcase Award
Professor Seungwon Shin of the Electrical Engineering School at KAIST and his research team won the Best Software Defined Networking (SDN) Solution Showcase Award hosted by the SDN World Congress, one of the biggest network summits held in Europe with over 2,000 participants. This year the conference took place in The Hague, the Netherlands, October 10-14, 2016.
SDN is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to respond quickly to changing business requirements via a centralized control console and to support the dynamic, scalable computing and storage needs of more modern computing environments such as data centers.
Collaborating with researchers from Queen’s University in the United Kingdom and Huawei, a global information and communications technology solutions provider in China, Professor Shin’s team, which is led by doctoral students Seungsoo Lee, Changhoon Yoon, and Jaehyun Nam, implemented a SDN security project called “DELTA.” ATTORESEARCH, a Korean SDN architecture and applications provider, conducted testing and verification for the project.
DELTA is a new SDN security evaluation framework with two main functions. It can automatically recognize attack cases against SDN elements across diverse environments and can assist in identifying unknown security problems within a SDN deployment.
The DELTA project consists of a control plane, the part of a network that carries signaling traffic and is responsible for routing; a data plane, the part of a network that carries user traffic; and a control channel that connects the two aforementioned planes. These three components have their own agents installed, which are all controlled by an agent manger. The agent manger can automatically detect any spots where the network security is weak.
Specifically, the project aimes to defense attacks against OpenFlow protocol, one of the first SDN standards; SDN controllers, a network operating system that is based on protocols; and network switch devices that use OpenFlow protocol.
The DELTA project was registered with the Open Networking Foundation, a user-driven organization dedicated to the promotion and adoption of SDN through open standards development, as an open source SDN security evaluation tool. This project is the only open source SDN which has been led by Korean researchers.
The SDN World Congress 2016 recognized the need for and importance of the DELTA project by conferring upon it the Best Solution Showcase Award. The Open Networking Foundation also widely publicized this award news.
Professor Shin said:
“In recent years, SDN has been attracting a large amount of interest as an emerging technology, but there still have not many SDN projects in Korea. This award acknowledges the advancement of Korean SDN technology, showing the potential for Korea to become a leader in SDN research.”
Picture: Major Components of the DELTA Project: Agents and Agent Manger
2016.10.25 View 7818 -
KAIST Graduate Han Receives a 2016 PECASE Award
President Barack Obama of the United States (US) announced 105 recipients of the 2016 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) on February 18. Among the awardees was a graduate from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST.
Dr. Jin-Woo Han has worked as a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center since graduating from KAIST in 2010. This year, he is the only awardee who received a doctoral degree from a Korean university to become a recipient of the highest honor bestowed by the US government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
The awards ceremony will take place in early spring at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Han has been involved in the development of radiation tolerant semiconductor devices as well as radiation and gas sensors under Dr. Meyya Meyyappan, Chief Scientist of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames Research Center.
KAIST and the NASA Ames Research Center made a research collaboration agreement in 2008, under which KAIST has sent 12 post-doctoral fellows to the center to date.
The PECASE awards, established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the US President. Awardees are selected for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community services as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.
2016.02.23 View 9016 -
KAIST's Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy Names Recipients of Science Journalism Awards
The Science Journalism Masters Program of the Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy at KAIST named the winners of the 2015 Science Journalism Awards on October 17, 2015. The award ceremony took place at KAIST’s Seoul campus.
The awards were created in 2011 to recognize exemplary journalism that has contributed to the advancement of science and technology in Korea.
This year, the Korean Broadcasting System’s science show called the “Jang Yeong-Sil Show” received the Grand Prize. Yeong-Sil Jang was a Korean scientist and astronomer during the Joseon Dynasty in the 14th century.
A television documentary on challenges facing farm-raised chickens, which was produced by the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation in Jeonju City, won the TV Award, while news coverage by Dong-A Daily on the outbreak of the Middle East respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Korea received the Print Award.
After the award ceremony, students and professors of the Science Journalism Program hosted a conference to review and discuss major issues covered by the news media in the past year.
2015.10.15 View 6197 -
KAIST Registers an Internationally Recognized Standard Patent
A video compression technology, jointly developed by Professor Mun-Chul Kim of the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), and the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), is registered internationally as the standard patent in the next-generation High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
HEVC (H.265) is an international technology standard that compresses large image data for Ultra High Definition (UHD) televisions and smartphones. It has the twice the compression efficiency as that of H.264/AVC which is most commonly used for processing full HD sources. This means that it is able to compress a video file to half the size while maintaining the same image quality.
Although the related market is at a nascent stage, HEVC technology has already been applied to the latest version of televisions and smartphones. Experts predict that the market will grow to USD 200 billion by 2016, and KAIST is expected to receive a royalty payment of USD 9.3 million from this patent.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC) established the HEVC standard in January 2013. Also, an international patent pool licensing corporation, MPEG LA announced the HEVC standard patent pool on September 29, 2014.
Professor Joongmyeon Bae, Dean of the Office of University-Industry Cooperation (OUIC) of KAIST, said, “This is an unprecedented case for Korea whereby a core technology developed by a university became an international standard, which has a vast impact on the market.”
President of KAIST, Steve Kang commented, “With its advanced technology, KAIST joined the HEVC standard patent pool as one of the 23 founding members along with Apple, Siemens, and NEC. This is a remarkable achievement.”
Picture 1: Improvements in video compression technology
Picture 2: Comparison of different screen resolutions
2014.10.09 View 11594 -
KAIST Co-owns the HEVC Patent Portfolio License
MPEG LA, LLC, a firm based in Denver, Colorado, which licenses patent pools covering essential patents required for the use of video coding technology, such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2), and HEVC/H.264, announced the availability of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) Patent Portfolio License on September 29, 2014.
The HEVC standard, also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is necessary to improve video coding and transmission efficiency for the Internet, televisions, and mobile gadgets with increased speed and capacity.
Through the portfolio license, users can easily obtain patent rights required for the HEVC standard in a single transaction, instead of negotiating separate licenses from multiple patent holders.
A total of 23 enterprises currently own essential HEVC patents. KAIST is the only Korean university among the joint patent owners. Collaborating with the Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Professor Mun-Chul Kim of the Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST developed one of the core patents.
For a link to a press release distributed by MPEG LA, LLC, please see:
MPEG LA, LLC, September 29, 2014
"MPEG LA, LLC Offers HEVC Patent Portfolio License"
http://www.mpegla.com/main/Pages/Media.aspx
2014.10.02 View 11691