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KAIST-NYU Digital Governance Forum Held
KAIST (President Kwang Hyung Lee) held the 'KAIST-NYU Digital Governance Forum' at the Korea Press Center in the morning of October 28th, 2022.
This forum was held in continuation to discuss the objectives of the 'Digital Vision Forum' that was hosted by New York University (NYU) back in September in the United States, and is the first public event to be held through joint efforts by KAIST and NYU since the signage of the 'KAIST-NYU Joint Campus' was presented at the New York forum.
< Signage of KAIST-NYU Joint Campus >
This forum was promoted based on the consensus of the two universities to create an international forum of solidarity to solve global challenges and seek new governance in the era of digital transformation.
Digital innovation technology is expected to bring economic and industrial benefits as well as political, social and ethical risks such as accelerating the digital divide, among others. In particular, in a time of global digital transformation, as the competition for digital and AI supremacy based on technology nationalism catches fire, there is an emergent need for a global governance system in which digital innovation and the value of freedom co-exist. With the consensus formed through this forum with NYU, KAIST plans to focus on detailing the vision for future digital cooperation that encompasses various stakeholders in our society.
To this end, President Kwang Hyung Lee of KAIST and President Andrew Hamilton of NYU led the forum with keynote addresses with President Hamilton taking part virtually, followed by NYU Professor Matthew Liao, a world-renowned scholar specialized in the ethics in the field of science and technology, and Jason Allford, Special Representative of the World Bank Group to Korea, presenting on relevant topics for discussion.
From KAIST, Professor Kyung Ryul Park of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy and Director So Young Kim of the Korea Policy Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, followed with their presentations. A panel discussion on governance in the period of digital transformation was also held, led by Professor Dongman Lee, the Dean of the College of Engineering.
To kick things off, Professor Matthew Liao of NYU proposed a normative system that can harmonize technology and social ethics while explaining various ethical issues following the technological development of artificial intelligence.
Jason Allford, Special Representative of the World Bank Group to Korea, outlined the changing roles of government in the digital era from the perspective of transparency and government efficiency and explained global development strategies through various cases of digital innovations by international organizations.
Professor Kyung Ryul Park of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST emphasized that the core of new digital governance is not only innovative technology but also the participation and harmony of various stakeholders at home at abroad and brought up the importance of multi-dimensional international solidarity based on digital transformation that goes beyond the flat ‘technological geopolitics.’
Professor So Young Kim, the Director of the Korea Policy Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution at KAIST, commented on the current government's digital platform strategy and emphasized the need for a leading digital transformation strategy that goes beyond the governance of the existing government.
Edward Mermelstein, the Commissioner for International Affairs of New York City, said, “The City of New York, shall also provide active support for the cooperative governance initiative organized by KAIST in Korea. As the conversation progresses further, we can draw up plans to organize international organizations to support the effort, likely to be named ‘Digitization for Good’, and we can go on to consider future collaboration,” to express the city’s willingness and anticipation for active cooperation.
Andrew Hamilton, the President of NYU, said "NYU is thrilled by the partnership we are embarking upon with KAIST, which goes hand in hand with our global tradition, and is based upon our bedrock commitment to the free movement of people and ideas.” He added that “As data-driven software, AI, and social networks become even more essential parts of our daily lives, I am confident that today’s discussions will lead to new and promising insights.”
President Kwang Hyung Lee of KAIST said, “It is significant that we are to cooperate with New York University to prepare a venue to assess the changes of the forth coming era at a time in which digital technology, government platforms, and public data are attracting attention as a medium that can create various social and economic value.”
President Lee added, “KAIST and NYU, the two institutions in cross-continental partnership to lead innovations in higher education via the creation of a joint campus, have joined forces to host this forum to create an opportunity to envision the future of a cooperative governance that is inclusive of key players like the government, businesses, the civil societies, academia, and international organizations.”
The 'KAIST-NYU Digital Governance Forum' was broadcast live on KAIST’s Official YouTube Channel from 9:30 am on the 28th of October (Korea Standard Time) with simultaneous interpretation provided in both Korean and English. A recording of the video is available online for everyone to watch free of charge.
KAIST’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/KAISTofficial
Forum Recording with English interpretation: https://youtu.be/Vs31i7BtfEw
2022.10.28 View 7039 -
Yuji Roh Awarded 2022 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship
KAIST PhD candidate Yuji Roh of the School of Electrical Engineering (advisor: Prof. Steven Euijong Whang) was selected as a recipient of the 2022 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship.
< KAIST PhD candidate Yuji Roh (advisor: Prof. Steven Euijong Whang) >
The Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship is a scholarship program that recognizes outstanding graduate students for their exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. This year, 36 people from around the world received the fellowship, and Yuji Roh from KAIST EE is the only recipient from universities in Korea. Each selected fellow will receive a $10,000 scholarship and an opportunity to intern at Microsoft under the guidance of an experienced researcher.
Yuji Roh was named a fellow in the field of “Machine Learning” for her outstanding achievements in Trustworthy AI. Her research highlights include designing a state-of-the-art fair training framework using batch selection and developing novel algorithms for both fair and robust training. Her works have been presented at the top machine learning conferences ICML, ICLR, and NeurIPS among others. She also co-presented a tutorial on Trustworthy AI at the top data mining conference ACM SIGKDD. She is currently interning at the NVIDIA Research AI Algorithms Group developing large-scale real-world fair AI frameworks.
The list of fellowship recipients and the interview videos are displayed on the Microsoft webpage and Youtube.
The list of recipients: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/phd-fellowship/2022-recipients/
Interview (Global): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Q-XwOOoJc
Interview (Asia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwq3R1XU8UE
[Highlighted research achievements by Yuji Roh: Fair batch selection framework]
[Highlighted research achievements by Yuji Roh: Fair and robust training framework]
2022.10.28 View 12468 -
A New Therapeutic Drug for Alzheimer’s Disease without Inflammatory Side Effects
Although Aduhelm, a monoclonal antibody targeting amyloid beta (Aβ), recently became the first US FDA approved drug for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) based on its ability to decrease Aβ plaque burden in AD patients, its effect on cognitive improvement is still controversial. Moreover, about 40% of the patients treated with this antibody experienced serious side effects including cerebral edemas (ARIA-E) and hemorrhages (ARIA-H) that are likely related to inflammatory responses in the brain when the Aβ antibody binds Fc receptors (FCR) of immune cells such as microglia and macrophages.
These inflammatory side effects can cause neuronal cell death and synapse elimination by activated microglia, and even have the potential to exacerbate cognitive impairment in AD patients. Thus, current Aβ antibody-based immunotherapy holds the inherent risk of doing more harm than good due to their inflammatory side effects.
To overcome these problems, a team of researchers at KAIST in South Korea has developed a novel fusion protein drug, αAβ-Gas6, which efficiently eliminates Aβ via an entirely different mechanism than Aβ antibody-based immunotherapy. In a mouse model of AD, αAβ-Gas6 not only removed Aβ with higher potency, but also circumvented the neurotoxic inflammatory side effects associated with conventional antibody treatments.
Their findings were published on August 4 in Nature Medicine.
Schematic of a chimeric Gas6 fusion protein. A single chain variable fragment (scFv) of
an Amyloid β (Aβ)-targeting monoclonal antibody is fused with a truncated receptor binding
domain of Gas6, a bridging molecule for the clearance of dead cells via TAM (TYRO3, AXL,
and MERTK) receptors, which are expressed by microglia and astrocytes.
“FcR activation by Aβ targeting antibodies induces microglia-mediated Aβ phagocytosis, but it also produces inflammatory signals, inevitably damaging brain tissues,” said paper authors Chan Hyuk Kim and Won-Suk Chung, associate professors in the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST.
“Therefore, we utilized efferocytosis, a cellular process by which dead cells are removed by phagocytes as an alternative pathway for the clearance of Aβ in the brain,” Prof. Kim and Chung said. “Efferocytosis is accompanied by anti-inflammatory responses to maintain tissue homeostasis. To exploit this process, we engineered Gas6, a soluble adaptor protein that mediates efferocytosis via TAM phagocytic receptors in such a way that its target specificity was redirected from dead cells to Aβ plaques.”
The professors and their team demonstrated that the resulting αAβ-Gas6 induced Aβ engulfment by activating not only microglial but also astrocytic phagocytosis since TAM phagocytic receptors are highly expressed by these two major phagocytes in the brain. Importantly, αAβ-Gas6 promoted the robust uptake of Aβ without showing any signs of inflammation and neurotoxicity, which contrasts sharply with the treatment using an Aβ monoclonal antibody. Moreover, they showed that αAβ-Gas6 substantially reduced excessive synapse elimination by microglia, consequently leading to better behavioral rescues in AD model mice.
“By using a mouse model of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a cerebrovascular disorder caused by the deposition of Aβ within the walls of the brain’s blood vessels, we also showed that the intrathecal administration of Gas6 fusion protein significantly eliminated cerebrovascular amyloids, along with a reduction of microhemorrhages. These data demonstrate that aAb-Gas6 is a potent therapeutic agent in eliminating Aβ without exacerbating CAA-related microhemorrhages.”
The resulting αAβ-Gas6 clears Aβ oligomers and fibrils without causing neurotoxicity (a-b, neurons: red, and fragmented axons: yellow) and proinflammatory responses (c, TNF release), which are conversely exacerbated by the treatment of an Aβ-targeting monoclonal antibody (Aducanumab).
Professors Kim and Chung noted, “We believe our approach can be a breakthrough in treating AD without causing inflammatory side effects and synapse loss. Our approach holds promise as a novel therapeutic platform that is applicable to more than AD. By modifying the target-specificity of the fusion protein, the Gas6-fusion protein can be applied to various neurological disorders as well as autoimmune diseases affected by toxic molecules that should be removed without causing inflammatory responses.”
The number and total area of Aβ plaques (Thioflavin-T, green) were significantly reduced in αAβ-Gas6-treated AD mouse brains compared to Aducanumab-treated ones (a, b). The cognitive functions of AD model mice were significantly rescued by αAβ-Gas6 treatment, whereas Aducanumab-treated AD mice showed partial rescue in these cognitive tests (c-e).
Professors Kim and Chung founded “Illimis Therapeutics” based on this strategy of designing chimeric Gas6 fusion proteins that would remove toxic aggregates from the nervous system. Through this company, they are planning to further develop various Gas6-fusion proteins not only for Ab but also for Tau to treat AD symptoms.
This work was supported by KAIST and the Korea Health Technology R&D Project that was administered by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) and the Korea Dementia Research Center (KDRC) funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare (MOHW) and the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), and KAIST.
Other contributors include Hyuncheol Jung and Se Young Lee, Sungjoon Lim, Hyeong Ryeol Choi, Yeseong Choi, Minjin Kim, Segi Kim, the Department of Biological Sciences, and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
To receive more up-to-date information on this new development, follow “Illimis Therapeutics” on twitter @Illimistx.
2022.08.05 View 11715 -
Atomically-Smooth Gold Crystals Help to Compress Light for Nanophotonic Applications
Highly compressed mid-infrared optical waves in a thin dielectric crystal on monocrystalline gold substrate investigated for the first time using a high-resolution scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscope.
KAIST researchers and their collaborators at home and abroad have successfully demonstrated a new platform for guiding the compressed light waves in very thin van der Waals crystals. Their method to guide the mid-infrared light with minimal loss will provide a breakthrough for the practical applications of ultra-thin dielectric crystals in next-generation optoelectronic devices based on strong light-matter interactions at the nanoscale.
Phonon-polaritons are collective oscillations of ions in polar dielectrics coupled to electromagnetic waves of light, whose electromagnetic field is much more compressed compared to the light wavelength. Recently, it was demonstrated that the phonon-polaritons in thin van der Waals crystals can be compressed even further when the material is placed on top of a highly conductive metal. In such a configuration, charges in the polaritonic crystal are “reflected” in the metal, and their coupling with light results in a new type of polariton waves called the image phonon-polaritons. Highly compressed image modes provide strong light-matter interactions, but are very sensitive to the substrate roughness, which hinders their practical application.
Challenged by these limitations, four research groups combined their efforts to develop a unique experimental platform using advanced fabrication and measurement methods. Their findings were published in Science Advances on July 13.
A KAIST research team led by Professor Min Seok Jang from the School of Electrical Engineering used a highly sensitive scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) to directly measure the optical fields of the hyperbolic image phonon-polaritons (HIP) propagating in a 63 nm-thick slab of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on a monocrystalline gold substrate, showing the mid-infrared light waves in dielectric crystal compressed by a hundred times.
Professor Jang and a research professor in his group, Sergey Menabde, successfully obtained direct images of HIP waves propagating for many wavelengths, and detected a signal from the ultra-compressed high-order HIP in a regular h-BN crystals for the first time. They showed that the phonon-polaritons in van der Waals crystals can be significantly more compressed without sacrificing their lifetime.
This became possible due to the atomically-smooth surfaces of the home-grown gold crystals used as a substrate for the h-BN. Practically zero surface scattering and extremely small ohmic loss in gold at mid-infrared frequencies provide a low-loss environment for the HIP propagation. The HIP mode probed by the researchers was 2.4 times more compressed and yet exhibited a similar lifetime compared to the phonon-polaritons with a low-loss dielectric substrate, resulting in a twice higher figure of merit in terms of the normalized propagation length.
The ultra-smooth monocrystalline gold flakes used in the experiment were chemically grown by the team of Professor N. Asger Mortensen from the Center for Nano Optics at the University of Southern Denmark.
Mid-infrared spectrum is particularly important for sensing applications since many important organic molecules have absorption lines in the mid-infrared. However, a large number of molecules is required by the conventional detection methods for successful operation, whereas the ultra-compressed phonon-polariton fields can provide strong light-matter interactions at the microscopic level, thus significantly improving the detection limit down to a single molecule. The long lifetime of the HIP on monocrystalline gold will further improve the detection performance.
Furthermore, the study conducted by Professor Jang and the team demonstrated the striking similarity between the HIP and the image graphene plasmons. Both image modes possess significantly more confined electromagnetic field, yet their lifetime remains unaffected by the shorter polariton wavelength. This observation provides a broader perspective on image polaritons in general, and highlights their superiority in terms of the nanolight waveguiding compared to the conventional low-dimensional polaritons in van der Waals crystals on a dielectric substrate.
Professor Jang said, “Our research demonstrated the advantages of image polaritons, and especially the image phonon-polaritons. These optical modes can be used in the future optoelectronic devices where both the low-loss propagation and the strong light-matter interaction are necessary. I hope that our results will pave the way for the realization of more efficient nanophotonic devices such as metasurfaces, optical switches, sensors, and other applications operating at infrared frequencies.”
This research was funded by the Samsung Research Funding & Incubation Center of Samsung Electronics and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). The Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, and The Villum Foundation, Denmark, also supported the work.
Figure. Nano-tip is used for the ultra-high-resolution imaging of the image phonon-polaritons in hBN launched by the gold crystal edge.
Publication:
Menabde, S. G., et al. (2022) Near-field probing of image phonon-polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride on gold crystals. Science Advances 8, Article ID: eabn0627. Available online at https://science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn0627.
Profile:
Min Seok Jang, MS, PhD
Associate Professor
jang.minseok@kaist.ac.kr
http://janglab.org/
Min Seok Jang Research Group
School of Electrical Engineering
http://kaist.ac.kr/en/
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Daejeon, Republic of Korea
2022.07.13 View 12685 -
The 1st Global Entrepreneurship Summer Camp bridges KAIST and Silicon Valley, US
Twenty KAIST students gave a go at selling their business ideas to investors at Silicon Valley on the “Pitch Day” at 2022 Global Entrepreneurship Summer Camp.
From Tuesday, June 21 to Monday, July 4, 2022, KAIST held the first Global Entrepreneurship Summer Camp (GESC).
The 2022 GESC, which was organized in collaboration with Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), KOTRA Silicon Valley IT Center, and KAIST Alumni at Silicon Valley, was a pilot program that offered opportunities of experiencing and learning about the cases of startup companies in Silicon Valley and a chance to expand businesses to Silicon Valley through networking.
Twenty KAIST students, including pre-startup entrepreneurs and students interested in global entrepreneurship with less than one year of business experience were selected. The first week of the program was organized by Startup KAIST while the second week program was organized by the Center for Global Strategies and Planning (GSP) at KAIST in collaboration with the Stanford Technology Venture Program (STVP), KAIST Alumni at Silicon Valley, and KOTRA at Silicon Valley.
Dr. Mo-Yun Lei Fong, the Executive Director of STVP, said, “The program offered an opportunity for us to realize our vision of empowering aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovation. By collaborating with KAIST and offering entrepreneurial insights to Korean students, we are able to have a positive impact on a global scale.” Mo added, “The program also enabled STVP to build bridges, learn from the students, and refine our culturally relevant curriculum by understanding Korean culture and ideas.”
On the “Pitch Day” on July 1, following a special talk by Dr. Chong-Moon Lee, the Chairman of AmBex Venture Partners, the students presented their team business ideas such as an AI-assisted, noise-canceling pillow devised for better sleep, a metaverse dating application, an XR virtual conferencing system, and an AI language tutoring application to the entice global investors’ curiosity. The invited investors, majorly based in Silicon Valley, commented that all the presentation was very exciting, and the level of pitches was beyond the expectation considering that the students have given only two weeks.
Ms. Seunghee Lee of the team “Bored KAIST Yacht Club”, which was awarded the first prize, explained, “our item, called ‘Meta-Everland’, is a service that offers real-time dating experiences similar to off-line dates. The GESC taught me that anybody can launch a startup as long as they are willing. Developing a business model from ideation and taking it to the actual pitching was challenging, but it was a very thrilling experience at the same time.” Lee added, “Most importantly, over the course of the program and the final pitch, I found out that an interesting idea can attract investors interest even at a very early stage of the launching.”
Mr. Byunghoon Hwang, a student who attended the program said, “Having learned the thoughts and attitudes the people at the front line of Silicon Valley, my views on career and launching of a start-up have been expanded a lot.”
Ms. Marina Mondragon, another attendee at the program, also said that the program was very meaningful because she was able to learn the difference between the ecosystem for the new start-up businesses at Korea and at Silicon Valley through her talks with the CEOs at Silicon Valley.
The program was co-organized by the Center for Global Strategies and Planning at KAIST International Office and Startup of KAIST. Dr. Man-Sung Yim, the Associate Vice President for KAIST International Office, who guided students in Silicon Valley, said, “I believe the GESC program broadened the views and entrepreneurial mindset of students. After joining this program, students stepped forward to become a founder of startups.” In addition, Dr. Young-Tae Kim, the Associate Vice President of the Institute for Startup KAIST, addressed “Startup KAIST will support business items founded via the program through various other programs in order to enhance their competitiveness in the global market.”
The GSP and Startup KAIST will continuously revamp the program by selecting distinguished fellows to join the program and coming up with innovative startup items.
Profile:
Sooa Lee, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
slee900@kaist.ac.kr
Center for Global Strategies and Planning
Office of Global Initiatives
KAIST International Office
https://io.kaist.ac.kr
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)Daejeon, Republic of Korea
2022.07.05 View 11470 -
Professor Juho Kim’s Team Wins Best Paper Award at ACM CHI 2022
The research team led by Professor Juho Kim from the KAIST School of Computing won a Best Paper Award and an Honorable Mention Award at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI) held between April 30 and May 6.
ACM CHI is the world’s most recognized conference in the field of human computer interactions (HCI), and is ranked number one out of all HCI-related journals and conferences based on Google Scholar’s h-5 index. Best paper awards are given to works that rank in the top one percent, and honorable mention awards are given to the top five percent of the papers accepted by the conference.
Professor Juho Kim presented a total of seven papers at ACM CHI 2022, and tied for the largest number of papers. A total of 19 papers were affiliated with KAIST, putting it fifth out of all participating institutes and thereby proving KAIST’s competence in research.
One of Professor Kim’s research teams composed of Jeongyeon Kim (first author, MS graduate) from the School of Computing, MS candidate Yubin Choi from the School of Electrical Engineering, and Dr. Meng Xia (post-doctoral associate in the School of Computing, currently a post-doctoral associate at Carnegie Mellon University) received a best paper award for their paper, “Mobile-Friendly Content Design for MOOCs: Challenges, Requirements, and Design Opportunities”.
The study analyzed the difficulties experienced by learners watching video-based educational content in a mobile environment and suggests guidelines for solutions. The research team analyzed 134 survey responses and 21 interviews, and revealed that texts that are too small or overcrowded are what mainly brings down the legibility of video contents. Additionally, lighting, noise, and surrounding environments that change frequently are also important factors that may disturb a learning experience.
Based on these findings, the team analyzed the aptness of 41,722 frames from 101 video lectures for mobile environments, and confirmed that they generally show low levels of adequacy. For instance, in the case of text sizes, only 24.5% of the frames were shown to be adequate for learning in mobile environments. To overcome this issue, the research team suggested a guideline that may improve the legibility of video contents and help overcome the difficulties arising from mobile learning environments.
The importance of and dependency on video-based learning continue to rise, especially in the wake of the pandemic, and it is meaningful that this research suggested a means to analyze and tackle the difficulties of users that learn from the small screens of mobile devices. Furthermore, the paper also suggested technology that can solve problems related to video-based learning through human-AI collaborations, enhancing existing video lectures and improving learning experiences. This technology can be applied to various video-based platforms and content creation.
Meanwhile, a research team composed of Ph.D. candidate Tae Soo Kim (first author), MS candidate DaEun Choi, and Ph.D. candidate Yoonseo Choi from the School of Computing received an honorable mention award for their paper, “Stylette: styling the Web with Natural Language”.
The research team developed a novel interface technology that allows nonexperts who are unfamiliar with technical jargon to edit website features through speech. People often find it difficult to use or find the information they need from various websites due to accessibility issues, device-related constraints, inconvenient design, style preferences, etc. However, it is not easy for laymen to edit website features without expertise in programming or design, and most end up just putting up with the inconveniences. But what if the system could read the intentions of its users from their everyday language like “emphasize this part a little more”, or “I want a more modern design”, and edit the features automatically?
Based on this question, Professor Kim’s research team developed ‘Stylette’, a system in which AI analyses its users’ speech expressed in their natural language and automatically recommends a new style that best fits their intentions. The research team created a new system by putting together language AI, visual AI, and user interface technologies. On the linguistic side, a large-scale language model AI converts the intentions of the users expressed through their everyday language into adequate style elements. On the visual side, computer vision AI compares 1.7 million existing web design features and recommends a style adequate for the current website. In an experiment where 40 nonexperts were asked to edit a website design, the subjects that used this system showed double the success rate in a time span that was 35% shorter compared to the control group.
It is meaningful that this research proposed a practical case in which AI technology constructs intuitive interactions with users. The developed technology can be applied to existing design applications and web browsers in a plug-in format, and can be utilized to improve websites or for advertisements by collecting the natural intention data of users on a large scale.
2022.06.13 View 8287 -
GSI Forum Highlights Global Collaboration Toward a Sustainable Global Economy
The forum stresses global collaboration to make the global value chain more resilient
Speakers at the 5th Global Strategy Institute International Forum on October 28 stressed the importance of global collaboration for rebuilding the global economy and making innovations in national science and technology governance in order to enhance national competitiveness. The forum entitled “Grand Strategic Shift under Global Techno-Geopolitical Paradigm” examined strategies for making the global supply chain more resilient and rebuild the global economy as well as how Korea could advance in the technology race.
Speakers concurred that technology has become an issue of national security. The global supply chain has been disrupted amid the global pandemic and intense conflict between the U.S. and China. Speakers presented a common solution: global collaboration and innovations in science and technology governance.
KAIST President Kwang Hyung Lee said in his opening remarks that the future ‘world map’ may turn out very differently depending on how we prepare and what we envision for the future. He also stressed the importance of technology sovereignty, adding that only those who can create their own new technology independently will be the future leaders.
Prime Minister Boo Kyum Kim and Vice Minister of Science and ICT Hongtaek Yong delivered congratulatory remarks. Keynote speakers included Professor Scott Stern from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Professor Aaron Chatterji from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Professor Sarah Kreps from the Department of Government at Cornell University, SK Group Chairperson Tae-Won Chey, President Woo Il Lee of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies, Professor Young Kwan Yoon at Seoul National University, President Eun Mee Kim of Ewha Womans University, and President Ieehwan Kim of the University of Science and Technology.
During the first session, Professor Chatterji stressed that how to make supply chains resilience will be the key for making long-term strategy with relevant government policy. He said that AI has become a general purpose technology (GPT) and Korea ranked 4th in AI innovation in the world, but how to translate this innovativeness into national strategic leadership will be a new challenge for Korea. He suggested that Korea strengthen its strategic partnerships with allies such as the U.S. and provide opportunities not only for established players but start-ups and entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, Professor Kreps said that industrial policy should also leverage trust and innovations for building technology alliances with a more longer-term approach, without antagonizing certain groups of nations.
Vice President for Planning and Budget Bowon Kim who joined the forum as a discussant pointed out that in this hyper-connected era, nothing can be manufactured in a single company and country without the global supply chain. “In longer-term policy and strategies, we should embrace China as a global economy partner and include all nations around the world.”
Chairman Chey from SK said that the clear role among universities, industry, and the government doesn’t exist any longer. Now, universities are working hard for the commercialization of technology from their labs. Industry is nurturing the talents inept for future industry, and the government is trying to introduce a more private-sector approach. As such, universities, the government, and industry should embrace all-inclusive approaches encompassing global politics and trade to lead on the global stage.
Meanwhile in the second session, all of the speakers stressed innovation in science and technology governance in order to adopt to the new industrial paradigm. They agreed to make prompt innovations and solid collaborative systems among the government ministries to ensure national competitiveness, especially in the field of science and technology.
President Lee from KOFST said Korea should adopt a first mover strategy and the government should adopt a mission-oriented projects and deregulate more. He pointed out that when mandating more autonomy in decision making, scientists and students can make more creative outcomes.
Professor Yoon at SNU stressed the close alliance with the U.S. in the technology race, but suggested that Korea should also seek ways to help minimize the technology gap between advanced and developing countries. Universities should also be allowed more autonomy in running creative curriculum and academic affairs to in order boost the competitiveness of science and technology.
President Kim from Ewha pointed out the role of education as a public good. In some countries, strengthening science and technology can be accomplished with wider educational opportunities in middle and high schools. President Kim also stressed expanding strategic partnerships. She said Korea should expand its alliances and partnerships, not only with the U.S. but with European countries and other niche countries where certain technologies are superior.
President Kim of UST stressed a new science and technology leadership is required to build technology sovereignty and the government should spearhead the deregulations of the government policy.
This GSI forum was co-hosted by two think-tanks at KAIST, the Korea Policy Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (KPC4IR) and the Innovation Strategy and Policy Institute (ISPI).
2021.10.28 View 8974 -
3 KAIST PhD Candidates Selected as the 2021 Google PhD Fellows
PhD candidates Soo Ye Kim and Sanghyun Woo from the KAIST School of Electrical Engineering and Hae Beom Lee from the Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI were selected as the 2021 Google PhD Fellows. The Google PhD Fellowship is a scholarship program that supports graduate school students from around the world that have produced excellent achievements from promising computer science-related fields. The 75 selected fellows will receive ten thousand dollars of funding with the opportunity to discuss research and receive one-on-one feedback from experts in related fields at Google.
Kim and Woo were named fellows in the field of "Machine Perception, Speech Technology and Computer Vision" with research of deep learning based super-resolution and computer vision respectively. Lee was named a fellow in the field of "Machine Learning" for his research in meta-learning.
Kim's research includes the formulation of novel methods for super-resolution and HDR video restoration and deep joint frame interpolation and super-resolution methods. Many of her works have been presented in leading conferences in computer vision and AI such as CVPR, ICCV, and AAAI. In addition, she has been collaborating as a research intern with the Vision Group Team at Adobe Research to study depth map refinement techniques.
(Kim's research on deep learning based joint super-resolution and inverse tone-mapping framework for HDR videos)
Woo’s research includes an effective deep learning model design based on the attention mechanism and learning methods based on self-learning and simulators. His works have been also presented in leading conferences such as CVPR, ECCV, and NeurIPS. In particular, his work on the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) which was presented at ECCV in 2018 has surpassed over 2700 citations on Google Scholar after being referenced in many computer vision applications. He was also a recipient of Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship in 2020.
(Woo's research on attention mechanism based deep learning models)
Lee’s research focuses effectively overcoming various limitations of the existing meta-learning framework. Specifically, he proposed to deal with a realistic task distribution with imbalances, improved the practicality of meta-knowledge, and made meta-learning possible even in large-scale task scenarios. These various studies have been accepted to numerous top-tier machine learning conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. In particular, one of his papers has been selected as an oral presentation at ICLR 2020 and another as a spotlight presentation at NeurIPS 2020.
(Lee's research on learning to balance and continual trajectory shifting)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the award ceremony was held virtually at the Google PhD Fellowship Summit from August 31st to September 1st. The list of fellowship recipients is displayed on the Google webpage.
2021.10.18 View 6078 -
Prof. Sang Wan Lee Selected for 2021 IBM Academic Award
Professor Sang Wan Lee from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering was selected as the recipient of the 2021 IBM Global University Program Academic Award. The award recognizes individual faculty members whose emerging science and technology contains significant interest for universities and IBM.
Professor Lee, whose research focuses on artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience, won the award for his research proposal titled A Neuroscience-Inspired Approach for Metacognitive Reinforcement Learning. IBM provides a gift of $40,000 to the recipient’s institution in recognition of the selection of the project but not as a contract for services.
Professor Lee’s project aims to exploit the unique characteristics of human reinforcement learning. Specifically, he plans to examines the hypothesis that metacognition, a human’s ability to estimate their uncertainty level, serves to guide sample-efficient and near-optimal exploration, making it possible to achieve an optimal balance between model-based and model-free reinforcement learning.
He was also selected as the winner of the Google Research Award in 2016 and has been working with DeepMind and University College London to conduct basic research on decision-making brain science to establish a theory on frontal lobe meta-enhance learning.
"We plan to conduct joint research for utilizing brain-based artificial intelligence technology and frontal lobe meta-enhanced learning technology modeling in collaboration with an international research team including IBM, DeepMind, MIT, and Oxford,” Professor Lee said.
2021.06.25 View 11993 -
T-GPS Processes a Graph with Trillion Edges on a Single Computer
Trillion-scale graph processing simulation on a single computer presents a new concept of graph processing
A KAIST research team has developed a new technology that enables to process a large-scale graph algorithm without storing the graph in the main memory or on disks. Named as T-GPS (Trillion-scale Graph Processing Simulation) by the developer Professor Min-Soo Kim from the School of Computing at KAIST, it can process a graph with one trillion edges using a single computer.
Graphs are widely used to represent and analyze real-world objects in many domains such as social networks, business intelligence, biology, and neuroscience. As the number of graph applications increases rapidly, developing and testing new graph algorithms is becoming more important than ever before. Nowadays, many industrial applications require a graph algorithm to process a large-scale graph (e.g., one trillion edges). So, when developing and testing graph algorithms such for a large-scale graph, a synthetic graph is usually used instead of a real graph. This is because sharing and utilizing large-scale real graphs is very limited due to their being proprietary or being practically impossible to collect.
Conventionally, developing and testing graph algorithms is done via the following two-step approach: generating and storing a graph and executing an algorithm on the graph using a graph processing engine.
The first step generates a synthetic graph and stores it on disks. The synthetic graph is usually generated by either parameter-based generation methods or graph upscaling methods. The former extracts a small number of parameters that can capture some properties of a given real graph and generates the synthetic graph with the parameters. The latter upscales a given real graph to a larger one so as to preserve the properties of the original real graph as much as possible.
The second step loads the stored graph into the main memory of the graph processing engine such as Apache GraphX and executes a given graph algorithm on the engine. Since the size of the graph is too large to fit in the main memory of a single computer, the graph engine typically runs on a cluster of several tens or hundreds of computers. Therefore, the cost of the conventional two-step approach is very high.
The research team solved the problem of the conventional two-step approach. It does not generate and store a large-scale synthetic graph. Instead, it just loads the initial small real graph into main memory. Then, T-GPS processes a graph algorithm on the small real graph as if the large-scale synthetic graph that should be generated from the real graph exists in main memory. After the algorithm is done, T-GPS returns the exactly same result as the conventional two-step approach.
The key idea of T-GPS is generating only the part of the synthetic graph that the algorithm needs to access on the fly and modifying the graph processing engine to recognize the part generated on the fly as the part of the synthetic graph actually generated.
The research team showed that T-GPS can process a graph of 1 trillion edges using a single computer, while the conventional two-step approach can only process of a graph of 1 billion edges using a cluster of eleven computers of the same specification. Thus, T-GPS outperforms the conventional approach by 10,000 times in terms of computing resources. The team also showed that the speed of processing an algorithm in T-GPS is up to 43 times faster than the conventional approach. This is because T-GPS has no network communication overhead, while the conventional approach has a lot of communication overhead among computers.
Professor Kim believes that this work will have a large impact on the IT industry where almost every area utilizes graph data, adding, “T-GPS can significantly increase both the scale and efficiency of developing a new graph algorithm.”
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea and Institute of Information & communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP).
Publication:
Park, H., et al. (2021) “Trillion-scale Graph Processing Simulation based on Top-Down Graph Upscaling,” Presented at the IEEE ICDE 2021 (April 19-22, 2021, Chania, Greece)
Profile:
Min-Soo Kim
Associate Professor
minsoo.k@kaist.ac.kr
http://infolab.kaist.ac.kr
School of Computing
KAIST
2021.05.06 View 7881 -
KAIST and Google Partner to Develop AI Curriculum
Two KAIST professors, Hyun Wook Ka from the School of Transdisciplinary Studies and Young Jae Jang from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, were recipients of Google Education Grants that will support the development of new AI courses integrating the latest industrial technology. This collaboration is part of the KAIST-Google Partnership, which was established in July 2019 with the goal of nurturing AI talent at KAIST.
The two proposals -- Professor Ka’s ‘Cloud AI-Empowered Multimodal Data Analysis for Human Affect Detection and Recognition’ and Professor Jang’s ‘Learning Smart Factory with AI’-- were selected by the KAIST Graduate School of AI through a school-wide competition held in July. The proposals then went through a final review by Google and were accepted. The two professors will receive $7,500 each for developing AI courses using Google technology for one year.
Professor Ka’s curriculum aims to provide a rich learning experience for students by providing basic knowledge on data science and AI and helping them obtain better problem solving and application skills using practical and interdisciplinary data science and AI technology.
Professor Jang’s curriculum is designed to solve real-world manufacturing problems using AI and it will be field-oriented. Professor Jang has been managing three industry-academic collaboration centers in manufacturing and smart factories within KAIST and plans to develop his courses to go beyond theory and be centered on case studies for solving real-world manufacturing problems using AI.
Professor Jang said, “Data is at the core of smart factories and AI education, but there is often not enough of it for the education to be effective. The KAIST Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory has a testbed for directly acquiring data generated from real semiconductor automation equipment, analyzing it, and applying algorithms, which enables truly effective smart factory and AI education.”
KAIST signed a partnership with Google in July 2019 to foster global AI talent and is operating various programs to train AI experts and support excellent AI research for two years.
The Google AI Focused Research Award supports world-class faculty performing cutting-edge research and was previously awarded to professors Sung Ju Hwang from the Graduate School of AI and Steven Whang from the School of Electrical Engineering along with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) credits. These two professors have been collaborating with Google teams since October 2018 and recently extended their projects to continue through 2021.
In addition, a Google Ph.D. Fellowship was awarded to Taesik Gong from the School of Computing in October this year, and three Student Travel Grants were awarded to Sejun Park from the School of Electrical Engineering, Chulhyung Lee from the Department of Mathematical Sciences, and Sangyun Lee from the School of Computing earlier in March. Five students were also recommended for the Google Internship program in March.
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2020.12.11 View 12355 -
Drawing the Line to Answer Art’s Big Questions
- KAIST scientists show how statistical physics can reveal art trends across time and culture. -
Algorithms have shown that the compositional structure of Western landscape paintings changed “suspiciously” smoothly between 1500 and 2000 AD, potentially indicating a selection bias by art curators or in art historical literature, physicists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
KAIST statistical physicist Hawoong Jeong worked with statisticians, digital analysts and art historians in Korea, Estonia and the US to clarify whether computer algorithms could help resolve long-standing questions about design principles used in landscape paintings, such as the placement of the horizon and other primary features.
“A foundational question among art historians is whether artwork contains organizing principles that transcend culture and time and, if yes, how these principles evolved over time,” explains Jeong. “We developed an information-theoretic approach that can capture compositional proportion in landscape paintings and found that the preferred compositional proportion systematically evolved over time.”
Digital versions of almost 15,000 canonical landscape paintings from the Western renaissance in the 1500s to the more recent contemporary art period were run through a computer algorithm. The algorithm progressively divides artwork into horizontal and vertical lines depending on the amount of information in each subsequent partition. It allows scientists to evaluate how artists and various art styles compose landscape artwork, in terms of placement of a piece’s most important components, in addition to how high or low the landscape’s horizon is placed.
The scientists started by analysing the first two partitioning lines identified by the algorithm in the paintings and found they could be categorized into four groups: an initial horizontal line followed by a second horizontal line (H-H); an initial horizontal line followed by a second vertical line (H-V); a vertical followed by horizontal line (V-H); or a vertical followed by a vertical line (V-V) (see image 1 and 2). They then looked at the categorizations over time.
They found that before the mid-nineteenth century, H-V was the dominant composition type, followed by H-H, V-H, and V-V. The mid-nineteenth century then brought change, with the H-V composition style decreasing in popularity with a rise in the H-H composition style. The other two styles remained relatively stable.
The scientists also looked at how the horizon line, which separates sky from land, changed over time. In the 16th century, the dominant horizon line of the painting was above the middle of the canvas, but it gradually descended to the lower middle of the canvas by the 17th century, where it remained until the mid-nineteenth century. After that, the horizon line began gradually rising again.
Interestingly, the algorithm showed that these findings were similar across cultures and artistic periods, even through periods dominated by a diversity in art styles. This similarity may well be a function, then, of a bias in the dataset.
“In recent decades, art historians have prioritized the argument that there is great diversity in the evolution of artistic expression rather than offering a relatively smoother consensus story in Western art,” Jeong says. “This study serves as a reminder that the available large-scale datasets might be perpetuating severe biases.”
The scientists next aim to broaden their analyses to include more diverse artwork, as this particular dataset was ultimately Western and male biased. Future analyses should also consider diagonal compositions in paintings, they say.
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea.
Publication:
Lee, B, et al. (2020) Dissecting landscape art history with information theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Vol. 117, No. 43, 26580-26590. Available online at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2011927117
Profile:
Hawoong Jeong, Ph.D.
Professor
hjeong@kaist.ac.kr
https://www.kaist.ac.kr
Department of Physics
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Daejeon, Republic of Korea
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2020.11.13 View 11424