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KAIST Celebrates the 2017 Commencement
KAIST hosted its 2017 Commencement, awarding diplomas to 2,767 members of the Class of 2017 during a ceremony on February 17. President Sung-Mo Kang, Minister Yang-hee Choi of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, and Chairman of the KAIST Board of Trustees Jang-Moo Lee joined the ceremony along with the graduates and their family and friends at the Ryu Keun Chul Sports Complex.
The graduating class included 638 Ph.D. degrees, 1,335 Master’s degrees, and 794 Bachelor’s degrees being conferred. Among them, Young-Ki Song from the Department of Electric Engineering was honored to win the Minister’s Award, the highest award bestowed to an undergraduate. The KAIST Presidential Award went to Min-Jae Park of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and the KAIST Board of Trustee Chairman’s Award was presented to Jae-Hyung Cho from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Including this year’s graduating class, KAIST has turned out more than 59,000 highly educated science and technology talents including 11,731 Ph.D.s since its foundation in 1971. This year, 24-year-old Seo-Hee Oh earned her Ph.D. in chemistry as the youngest Ph.D. of the year after completing her Master’s and Ph.D. combined course in three years.
President Sung-Mo Kang praised the creativity of this graduating class and their excellent ability in his charge, saying, “As future leaders of our society, you are expected to develop a sense of compassion and outstanding professionalism to contribute to the advancement of not only Korea but also the whole world.’
For full text of President Kang’s charge to the graduates, please click.
2017.02.17 View 9652 -
KAIST's Doctoral Student Receives a Hoffman Scholarship Award
Hyo-Sun Lee, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of EEWS (Environment, Energy, Water and Sustainability), KAIST, is a recipient of the 2016 Dorothy M. and Earl S. Hoffman Scholarships presented by the American Vacuum Society (AVS). The award ceremony took place during the Society’s 63rd International Symposium and Exhibition on November 6-11, 2016 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Lee is the first Korean and foreign student to receive this scholarship.
The Hoffman Scholarships were established in 2002 to recognize and encourage excellence in graduate studies in the sciences and technologies of interest to AVS. The scholarships are funded by a bequest from Dorothy M. Hoffman, who was a pioneering member of the Society of Women Engineers and served as the president of AVS in 1974.
Lee received the scholarship for her research that detects hot electrons from chemical reactions on catalytic surface using nanodevices. Nano Letters, an academic journal published by the American Chemical Society, described her work in its February 2016 issue as a technology that allows quantitative analysis of hot electrons by employing a new nanodevice and therefore helps researchers understand better the mechanism of chemical reactions on nanocatalytic surface. She also published her work to detect the flow of hot electrons that occur on metal nanocatalytic surface during hydrogen oxidation reactions in Angewandte Chemie.
Lee said, “I am pleased to receive this honor from such a world-renowned academic society. Certainly, this will be a great support for my future study and research.”
Founded in 1953, AVS is an interdisciplinary, professional society composed of approximately 4,500 members worldwide. It supports networking among academic, industrial, government, and consulting professionals involved in a range of established and emerging science and technology areas such as chemistry, physics, engineering, business, and technology development.
2016.11.17 View 10375 -
Professor Lee Co-chairs the Global Future Councils on Biotechnology of the WEF
The World Economic Forum (WEF) established a new global network of the world’s leading experts, “The Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils,” to explore innovative solutions for the most pressing global challenges. The Councils’ first meeting took place on November 13-14, 2016, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Some 25 nations joined as member states. The Councils have 35 committees.
Over 700 global leaders in business, government, civil society and academia gathered at the inaugural meeting to “develop ideas and strategies to prepare the world for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with topics including smart cities, robotics, and the future of mobility,” according to a statement issued by the WEF.
Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST was appointed to co-chair one of the Councils' committees, The Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils on Biotechnology, for two years. The other chairperson is Dr. Feng Zhang, a professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who played a critical role in the development of optogenetics and CRISPR technologies.
The Biotechnology Committee consists of 24 globally recognized professionals in life sciences, law, ethics and policy including Thomas Connelly, the executive director of the American Chemical Society, Tina Fano, the executive vice president of Novozymes, and Mostafa Ronaghi, the chief technology officer of Illumina.
Professor Lee also serves as a committee member of The Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“Life sciences and engineering will receive more attention as a key element of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that the global society as a whole has been experiencing now. Together with thought leaders gathered worldwide, I will join the international community’s concerted efforts to address issues of importance that impact greatly on the future of humanity,” Professor Lee said.
In addition, Professor Lee received the James E. Bailey Award 2016 from The Society for Biological Engineering on November 15, 2016. He is the first Asian researcher to be recognized for his contributions to the field of biotechnology.
2016.11.15 View 9934 -
Continuous Roll-Process Technology for Transferring and Packaging Flexible Large-Scale Integrated Circuits
A research team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from KAIST and by Dr. Jae-Hyun Kim from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) has jointly developed a continuous roll-processing technology that transfers and packages flexible large-scale integrated circuits (LSI), the key element in constructing the computer’s brain such as CPU, on plastics to realize flexible electronics.
Professor Lee previously demonstrated the silicon-based flexible LSIs using 0.18 CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) process in 2013 (ACS Nano, “In Vivo Silicon-based Flexible Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Monolithically Encapsulated with Biocompatible Liquid Crystal Polymers”) and presented the work in an invited talk of 2015 International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM), the world’s premier semiconductor forum.
Highly productive roll-processing is considered a core technology for accelerating the commercialization of wearable computers using flexible LSI. However, realizing it has been a difficult challenge not only from the roll-based manufacturing perspective but also for creating roll-based packaging for the interconnection of flexible LSI with flexible displays, batteries, and other peripheral devices.
To overcome these challenges, the research team started fabricating NAND flash memories on a silicon wafer using conventional semiconductor processes, and then removed a sacrificial wafer leaving a top hundreds-nanometer-thick circuit layer. Next, they simultaneously transferred and interconnected the ultrathin device on a flexible substrate through the continuous roll-packaging technology using anisotropic conductive film (ACF). The final silicon-based flexible NAND memory successfully demonstrated stable memory operations and interconnections even under severe bending conditions. This roll-based flexible LSI technology can be potentially utilized to produce flexible application processors (AP), high-density memories, and high-speed communication devices for mass manufacture.
Professor Lee said, “Highly productive roll-process was successfully applied to flexible LSIs to continuously transfer and interconnect them onto plastics. For example, we have confirmed the reliable operation of our flexible NAND memory at the circuit level by programming and reading letters in ASCII codes. Out results may open up new opportunities to integrate silicon-based flexible LSIs on plastics with the ACF packing for roll-based manufacturing.”
Dr. Kim added, “We employed the roll-to-plate ACF packaging, which showed outstanding bonding capability for continuous roll-based transfer and excellent flexibility of interconnecting core and peripheral devices. This can be a key process to the new era of flexible computers combining the already developed flexible displays and batteries.”
The team’s results will be published on the front cover of Advanced Materials (August 31, 2016) in an article entitled “Simultaneous Roll Transfer and Interconnection of Silicon NAND Flash Memory.” (DOI: 10.1002/adma.201602339)
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OJjAEm27sw
Picture 1: This schematic image shows the flexible silicon NAND flash memory produced by the simultaneous roll-transfer and interconnection process.
Picture 2: The flexible silicon NAND flash memory is attached to a 7 mm diameter glass rod.
2016.09.01 View 12030 -
Professor Kun-pyo Lee Appointed Honorary Fellow of the Design Research Society
Founded in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1966, the Design Research Society is an international academic organization that promotes excellence in design and supports the interests of the design research community.
Professor Kun-pyo Lee of the Industrial Design Department at KAIST received his honorary fellowship from the Society at its 50th international conference held from June 27, 2016 to July 3, 2016 in Brighton, UK.
The Society recognized Professor Lee’s academic achievements and his contribution to the advancement of design research nationally and globally. To date, only eight researchers have received honorary fellowships from the Society, and he is the first Asian to become an honorary fellow.
Professor Lee has worked at KAIST for more than 30 years as a professor in industrial engineering and served on various important positions such as the president of the Korean Society of Design Science, the president of the International Association of Societies of Design Research, an executive vice president of the Corporate Design Center at LG Electronics, and an advisory board member for Human-centered Design Network in Japan and UXnet in the United States.
By introducing the concept of user experience (UX) in Korea for the first time, he developed this field while focusing on user-centered designs to optimize interactive digital products as well as interaction design to create mental and physical interfaces between people and interactive digital products, services, and systems.
Professor Lee said, “I am pleased to become an honorary fellow of the Design Research Society. For quiet some time, industrial design remained in the domain of practical studies, lacking the kind of support needed to grow as an independent academic and research discipline, but this has changed rapidly in recent years. I will continue to remain actively involved in the development of industrial design engineering in Korea and the world.”
2016.07.19 View 8617 -
K-Glass 3 Offers Users a Keyboard to Type Text
KAIST researchers upgraded their smart glasses with a low-power multicore processor to employ stereo vision and deep-learning algorithms, making the user interface and experience more intuitive and convenient.
K-Glass, smart glasses reinforced with augmented reality (AR) that were first developed by KAIST in 2014, with the second version released in 2015, is back with an even stronger model. The latest version, which KAIST researchers are calling K-Glass 3, allows users to text a message or type in key words for Internet surfing by offering a virtual keyboard for text and even one for a piano.
Currently, most wearable head-mounted displays (HMDs) suffer from a lack of rich user interfaces, short battery lives, and heavy weight. Some HMDs, such as Google Glass, use a touch panel and voice commands as an interface, but they are considered merely an extension of smartphones and are not optimized for wearable smart glasses. Recently, gaze recognition was proposed for HMDs including K-Glass 2, but gaze cannot be realized as a natural user interface (UI) and experience (UX) due to its limited interactivity and lengthy gaze-calibration time, which can be up to several minutes.
As a solution, Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo and his team from the Electrical Engineering Department recently developed K-Glass 3 with a low-power natural UI and UX processor. This processor is composed of a pre-processing core to implement stereo vision, seven deep-learning cores to accelerate real-time scene recognition within 33 milliseconds, and one rendering engine for the display.
The stereo-vision camera, located on the front of K-Glass 3, works in a manner similar to three dimension (3D) sensing in human vision. The camera’s two lenses, displayed horizontally from one another just like depth perception produced by left and right eyes, take pictures of the same objects or scenes and combine these two different images to extract spatial depth information, which is necessary to reconstruct 3D environments. The camera’s vision algorithm has an energy efficiency of 20 milliwatts on average, allowing it to operate in the Glass more than 24 hours without interruption.
The research team adopted deep-learning-multi core technology dedicated for mobile devices. This technology has greatly improved the Glass’s recognition accuracy with images and speech, while shortening the time needed to process and analyze data. In addition, the Glass’s multi-core processor is advanced enough to become idle when it detects no motion from users. Instead, it executes complex deep-learning algorithms with a minimal power to achieve high performance.
Professor Yoo said, “We have succeeded in fabricating a low-power multi-core processer that consumes only 126 milliwatts of power with a high efficiency rate. It is essential to develop a smaller, lighter, and low-power processor if we want to incorporate the widespread use of smart glasses and wearable devices into everyday life. K-Glass 3’s more intuitive UI and convenient UX permit users to enjoy enhanced AR experiences such as a keyboard or a better, more responsive mouse.”
Along with the research team, UX Factory, a Korean UI and UX developer, participated in the K-Glass 3 project.
These research results entitled “A 126.1mW Real-Time Natural UI/UX Processor with Embedded Deep-Learning Core for Low-Power Smart Glasses” (lead author: Seong-Wook Park, a doctoral student in the Electrical Engineering Department, KAIST) were presented at the 2016 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that took place January 31-February 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/If_anx5NerQ
Figure 1: K-Glass 3
K-Glass 3 is equipped with a stereo camera, dual microphones, a WiFi module, and eight batteries to offer higher recognition accuracy and enhanced augmented reality experiences than previous models.
Figure 2: Architecture of the Low-Power Multi-Core Processor
K-Glass 3’s processor is designed to include several cores for pre-processing, deep-learning, and graphic rendering.
Figure 3: Virtual Text and Piano Keyboard
K-Glass 3 can detect hands and recognize their movements to provide users with such augmented reality applications as a virtual text or piano keyboard.
2016.02.26 View 13674 -
GSIS Graduates Its First Doctor
The Graduate School of Information Security at KAIST (GSIS) granted its first doctoral degree to Il-Goo Lee at the university’s 2016 commencement on February 19, 2016.
Lee received the degree for his dissertation entitled “Interference-Aware Secure Communications for Wireless LANs.”
He explained the background of his research:
“As we use wireless technology more and more in areas of the Internet of Things (IoT), unmanned vehicles, and drones, information security will become an issue of major concern. I would like to contribute to the advancement of communications technology to help minimize wireless interference between devices while ensuring their optimal performance.”
Based on his research, he developed a communications technique to increase wireless devices’ energy efficiency and the level of their security, and created a prototype to showcase that technique.
He plans to continue his research in the development of the next generation WiFi chip sets to protect the information security of IoT and wireless devices.
Since its establishment in March 2011, KAIST’s GSIS has conferred 50 master’s and one doctoral degrees.
2016.02.18 View 9865 -
Ph.D. Candidate Seo Wins the Human Tech Paper Award
Hyun-Suk Seo, a doctoral student of KAIST’s Department of Electrical Engineering, received the grand prize of the “22nd Human Tech Paper Award” on February 3, 2016 from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Seo was the first to receive this prize ever since the Human Tech Paper Award was established 22 years ago. Until last year, the highest prize awarded for KAIST was a gold one.
The “Human Tech Paper Award” was established in 1994 by Samsung Electronics to discover and support outstanding scientists in the field of electrical engineering.
Entitled “Self-Gated Cardiac Cine MRI Using Phase Information,” Seo’s paper presented a technology that would reduce discomforts and inconveniences experienced by patients who take a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
This technology uses the speed changes of aorta and the abdominal movements of body to obtain the phase changes of magnetic resonance signals so that MRIs may be taken despite the organs’ movements.
Seo commented on his research, “I wanted to develop a technique that can make MRI a more comfortable experience. I will continue my research on this subject and hope to serve the needs of the society.”
In addition, the “Special Award,” which is given to schools, was awarded to KAIST. KAIST’s Department of Electrical Engineering has also been named the department that has received the second most awards (15 awards) this year.
Oh-Hyun Kwon, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, Steve Kang, President of KAIST, and Nak-In Seo, President of Seoul National University, participated in the event.
Picture: Hyun-Suk Seo (left), the recipient of the grand prize of the 2016 Human Tech Paper Award, and Oh-Hyun Kwon (right), Vice President of Samsung Electronics
2016.02.06 View 9871 -
A Firefighter Drone That Flies and Crawls Up Walls
KAIST researchers developed a wall-climbing scout drone to fight fires in high-rises, finding the source of the fires and locating people trapped inside.
The 1974 American disaster film Towering Inferno depicted well the earnest struggles of firefighters engaged in ending a fire at a 138-story skyscraper. To this day, fires at high-rise buildings are considered one of the most dangerous disasters.
Skyscraper fires are particularly difficult to contain because of their ability to spread rapidly in high-occupant density spaces and the challenge of fighting fires in the buildings’ complex vertical structure. Accessibility to skyscrapers at the time of the fire is limited, and it is hard to assess the initial situation.
A research team at KAIST led by Professor Hyun Myung of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department developed an unmanned aerial vehicle, named the Fireproof Aerial RObot System (FAROS), which detects fires in skyscrapers, searches the inside of the building, and transfers data in real time from fire scenes to the ground station.
As an extended version of Climbing Aerial RObot System (CAROS) that was created in 2014 by the research team, the FAROS can also fly and climb walls.
The FAROS, whose movements rely on a quadrotor system, can freely change its flight mode into a spider’s crawling on walls, and vice versa, facilitating unimpeded navigation in the labyrinth of narrow spaces filled with debris and rubble inside the blazing building.
The drone “estimates” its pose by utilizing a 2-D laser scanner, an altimeter, and an Inertia Measurement Unit sensor to navigate autonomously. With the localization result and using a thermal-imaging camera to recognize objects or people inside a building, the FAROS can also detect and find the fire-ignition point by employing dedicated image-processing technology.
The FAROS is fireproof and flame-retardant. The drone’s body is covered with aramid fibers to protect its electric and mechanical components from the direct effects of the flame. The aramid fiber skin also has a buffer of air underneath it, and a thermoelectric cooling system based on the Peltier effect to help maintain the air layer within a specific temperature range.
The research team demonstrated the feasibility of the localization system and wall-climbing mechanism in a smoky indoor environment. The fireproof test showed that the drone could endure the heat of over 1,000° Celsius from butane gas and ethanol aerosol flames for over one minute.
Professor Myung said, “As cities become more crowded with skyscrapers and super structures, fire incidents in these high-rise buildings are life-threatening massive disasters. The FAROS can be aptly deployed to the disaster site at an early stage of such incidents to minimize the damage and maximize the safety and efficiency of rescue mission.”
The research team has recently started to enhance the performance of the fireproof design for the exteroceptive sensors including a 2-D laser scanner and a thermal-imaging camera because those sensors could be more exposed to fire than other inside sensors and electric components.
This research was funded by the KAIST Initiative for Disaster Studies and the KAIST Institute.
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/gPNRZi0EPQw
Picture 1: Demonstration of Wall-climbing
The Fireproof Aerial RObot System (FAROS) is a wall-climbing scout drone developed to conduct explorations into the site of skyscraper fires. It has an ability to climb walls in smoky, narrow spaces inside buildings.
Figure 2: An Ability to Withstand Fires
The FAROS can endure the heat of over 1,000° Celsius from butane gas and ethanol aerosol flames for over one minute.
2016.01.20 View 15876 -
Professors Jeon and Choi Receive the Young Scientist Award
Professors Seokwoo Jeon of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Jang Wook Choi of the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability (EEWS) at KAIST received the Young Scientist Award.
The award ceremony took place at the Korea Press Center in Seoul. Presented by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning of Korea and the National Academy of Engineering of Korea, the Young Scientist Award is given to outstanding scientists under the age of 40 who have demonstrated excellence in their research in the field of natural science.
Each year the award is given to three scientists in different areas.
Professor Jeon was recognized for his achievement in creating a new property of materials. He studied synthesis and development of low-dimensional nanomaterials and developed a large area nanostructure.
Professor Choi’s research area was to discover optimal materials for rechargeable batteries. By applying his research, he developed rechargeable batteries with high efficiency, making the wearable system more feasible.
2016.01.11 View 12867 -
Professor Keon-Jae Lee Lectures at IEDM and ISSCC Forums
Professor Keon-Jae Lee of KAIST’s Materials Science and Engineering Department delivered a speech at the 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held on December 7-9, 2015 in Washington, D.C.
He will also present a speech at the 2016 International Solid-State Circuits Conference scheduled on January 31-February 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
Both professional gatherings are considered the world’s most renowned forums in electronic devices and semiconductor technology. It is rare for a Korean researcher to be invited to speak at these global conferences.
Professor Lee was recognized for his research on flexible NAND chips. The Korea Times, an English language daily newspaper in Korea, reported on his participation in the forums and his recent work. An excerpt of the article follows below:
“KAIST Professor to Lecture at Renowned Tech Forums”
By Lee Min-hyung, The Korea Times, November 26, 2015
Recently he has focused on delivering technologies for producing flexible materials that can be applied to everyday life. The flexible NAND flash memory chips are expected to be widely used for developing flexible handsets. His latest research also includes flexible light-emitting diodes (LED) for implantable biomedical applications.
Lee is currently running a special laboratory focused on developing new flexible nano-materials. The research group is working to develop what it calls “self-powered flexible electronic systems” using nanomaterials and electronic technology.
Lee’s achievement with flexible NAND chips was published in the October edition of Nano Letters, the renowned U.S.-based scientific journal.
He said that flexible memory chips will be used to develop wearable computers that can be installed anywhere.
2015.11.26 View 12365 -
Academic Award Established in the Honor of Professor Jae-gyu Lee
An academic award has been established to celebrate the academic achievements of Jae-gyu Lee, a chair professor at KAIST’s Business and Management Department.
The Korean Society of Management Information Systems (KMIS) created the “Safe Internet Jae-gyu Lee Academic Award” at the 2015 KMIS Fall Symposium held on November 21, 2015 at the Business and Management building of Yonsei University in Seoul.
The award will be presented to researchers operating both in and outside Korea, who strive to achieve a clean and safe Internet environment by preventing cyber terrors, attacks, and crimes.
Appointed as the President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), a global academic organization to advance the field of information systems, in July 2015, Professor Lee has adopted the “safe and clean Internet culture” as the official vision of the AIS. During his inaugural speech, he urged the international community including AIS to work together for better solutions to cyber problems.
For the implementation of the Safe Internet Jae-gyu Lee Academic Award, KMIS plans to form a committee to select winners through evaluations and recommendations. The award will be presented from 2016 forward.
Also, Professor Lee has recently donated USD 87,000 to KMIS to fund research in safe Internet culture and cyberspace security.
2015.11.25 View 8381