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KAIST wins second place in unmanned boat competition
KAIST took second place in an international competition to promote technologies of the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).
Professor Jin-hwan Kim’s research team from KAIST’s Ocean Systems Engineering Department won the second place in Maritime RobotX Challenge which took place for the first time from October 20 - 26 in Marina Bay, Singapore.
Along with automobiles and drones, the necessity for unmanned boats has grown. To encourage and examine the development of these technologies, the U.S. Office of Naval Research decided to organize an unmanned boat competition which took place for the first time this year.
After three teams were selected from a domestic competition in each countries, a total of fifteen teams from five countries from the Pacific Rim including Korea, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Singapore competed. Teams from such universities as MIT, Tokyo University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and Queensland University of Technology participated. In addition to KAIST, Seoul National University and Ulsan University participated.
Using a 4.5 meters long and 2.5 meters wide unmanned boat provided by the organizer, each team had to implement an integrated system that combined a propulsion system, hardware, and autonomous software. Each team’s vessel had to perform tasks without manual control, employing autonomous driving through recognition of the course, searching underwater for acoustic sources, automatically approaching piers, remote observation of buoy, and avoidance and detection of obstacles.
Although KAIST outpaced MIT in the semifinal which selected six out of fifteen teams, it won the second place in the final. As well as winning second prize, KAIST also won best website prize and a special prize from the competition sponsor, Northrop Grumman Corporation, an American defense technology company, totaling 16,500 U.S. dollars of prize money.
The Vice President for Planning and Budget, Professor Seungbin Park said, “It was a great opportunity to showcase the advanced unmanned robot technology of Korea.” He added that “this raised KAIST’s reputation as a global research oriented university.”
Professor Kim commented, “Along with automobiles and drones, the necessity for the development of unmanned ocean vehicles such as unmanned boats and submarines are recognized these days.” He added that “the use of unmanned boats will make the process of channel investigation, ocean exploration, surveillance over water territories safer and more effective.”
Professor Kim’s team was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Samsung Heavy Industries, Sonar Tech, Daeyang Electric, and Red-one Technology.
KAIST Team's Unmanned Boat
The Competition's Missions
2014.12.12 View 10524 -
IAMCOMPANY, an educational technology startup created by a KAIST student
In-Mo Chung, a senior student of the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, developed a mobile homework book application, IAMSCHOOL, in order to help parents engage, more interactively, in their children’s school activities.
Chung said in an interview with KAIST:
“I came up with creating my company, IAMCOMPANY, when I worked as a volunteer for a student club in 2009 that provides an educational service to high school students living in a less-favored environment. I found out their educational environment very poor, which ultimately led me to build a public interest business model for education.”
Chung created a few mobile applications including IAMSCHOOL and IAMCLASS. The application, IAMSCHOOL, receives school’s notices, homework assignments, or any information related to classes and sends them directly and immediately to parents, allowing real-time communications between parents and teachers. In Korea, parents usually check as many as 50 school notices per month.
Once registered, private educational institutes and public organizations can also receive school information through this application.
In July 2011, the Department of Science Management at KAIST hosted a student competition for startup ideas, and Chung’s idea to build an educational application won the best award. In 2012, he received the grand prize at the KAIST E-5 Startup Competition.
An undergraduate student who is the chief executive officer of a tech startup
Chung established IAMCOMPANY with the seed fund of 13 million Korean won that he had received from the city government of Daejeon. His business idea was selected as one of the 300 College Student Startup Projects, a startup support program operated by Daejeon City to encourage entrepreneurship among college and university students.
Chung talked about the background of his business:
“I think that my idea to offer a “free educational application” helped me win the first prize at the student startup competition. At that time, I was still young, so I considered the winning of the competition as an “exercise” to build my own business in the future. But when I actually started my company, I found out that KAIST’s startup programs helped me a lot throughout the entire process and realized that these programs are good enough for young entrepreneurs to build up their company from a single idea.”
KAIST professors and staff support student startups.
Chung took in-depth mentoring from KAIST professors. Professor Min-Hwa Lee of the Department of Management Science and Professor Lak-Kyoung Song of the Department of Technology Management, who is also the president of the Daejeon Creative Economy Innovation Center, have supported Chung’s endeavors. President Taek-Su Kang of the KAIST Innovation Center gave Chung a lot of advice as he was developing IAMCOMPANY’s initial business model. Chung said that even now, they look for solutions together when his business ran into a brick wall.
Professor Lee said, “IAMCOMPANY does not aim for profit. Instead, by supplying free applications, they improve the environment of education and eventually create public interest. Also, they find out consumers’ hidden demands and satisfied it creatively.”
With 8,000 schools registered to IAMSCHOOL, 750,000 parents are using the application in just two years of its release. Parents and teachers responded enthusiastically.
The application “IAMSCHOOL” provides services for 8,000 schools in Korea. Currently, 750,000 parents are using this application.
The company offers the nation’s largest online education service. The reason behind their rapid growth is that their service solves communications problems between schools and parents in a simple and efficient manner.
Jung-Mi Hwang, a teacher at Galma Elementary School in Dajeon, said:
“After using this application, there are fewer occasions of students forgetting their school materials. We think this is because the parents can check the school notices and newsletters at any time through the application.”
She added, “I hope more and more schools will use this application because it is convenient and also available for free.”
Another teacher from Daedeok Elementary School in Daejeon, Dong-Min Nam, said that “many parents like this application since they are immediately notified with school events.”
KAIST’s Technology Business Incubation Center
“After moving around many places due to expensive rent,” Chung said that “we finally moved into the Technology Business Incubation Center (TBIC) at KAIST. The center helped us not only providing the space, but also mentoring and connecting us with venture investment companies. This was a great help in attracting initial investments.”
Chung added:
“At first, a staff member from TBIC was concerned about the viability of my company. I was then an undergraduate student with zero business experience, and from his standpoint, I was taking a huge risk.”
But in several months after its establishment, IAMCOMPANY has grown to have 16 employees.
An investment of 1.5 billion Korean won from a venture capital company led to a sustainable growth.
In early stage, IAMCOMPANY received 300 million Korean won from a venture capital company, and it recently attracted additional 1.2 billion won from a leading venture capital. With these investments, the company grew further. Moreover, investments from large educational corporations have proved the value and competitiveness of the company in the education market.
Chung plans to expand his service globally, particularly in China and Singapore.
He said that he would not forget how he had started his business, and with such a focused mind, he would strive to provide students and parents with quality educational services while proactively incorporating the advanced information technology (IT) into his products.
A bold movement to Pangyo Techno Valley, a Korean version of Silicon Valley
Although the company started with only two members, as of August 2014, it boasts of having twenty employees, a remarkable leap of growth within just two years.
In April this year, Chung relocated his office from TBIC to Pangyo Techno Valley, the Silicon Valley of Korea, in order to provide a better work environment to his staff.
It was not an easy decision for him to leave the comfortable, well-known place, the KAIST campus, and the colleagues, including TBIC staff and KAIST professors, who had helped his startup efforts in early days. However, in order to recruit better employees and to access additional IT resources and education-related companies, Chung decided to make a bold movement, relocating his business to Pangyo Techno Valley in Seoul.
A reputable American venture capital investor, Timothy C. Draper, invested in IAMCOMPANY
Chung was able to secure solid support from an eminent global investor, Timothy C. Draper, the founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital based in Menlo Park in California.
Recently, Draper, a legendary investor of the Silicon Valley, invested USD 20,000 in IAMCOMPANY. Draper discovered worldwide venture companies such as Hotmail, Skype, and Baidu. IAMCOMPANY received high marks from him as a company with a competitive edge in the global education market.
Chung met Draper in April 2014 when he participated in a television network’s (Korean Broadcasting System) audition program for startups. Draper was one of the judges for the program, and he was impressed by the robust growth of IAMCOMPANY. He eventually made a decision to chip in USD 20,000 in Chung’s company.
Chung said that he was glad to meet the tycoon of Silicon Valley who recognized the potential of his company.
In last October, IAMSCHOOL was selected for the K-APP Global Hub Program—a global market pioneering program to support the development of mobile applications—which was sponsored by the Small and Medium Business Administration in Korea.
IAMCOMPANY will bring ‘the Korean Wave’ in the area of educational applications.
Chung said, “We plan to sustainably manage the applications and add more functions, so that more educational institutions can adopt our application.”
The company aims to provide its service to over 11,000 schools and 100,000 academies nationally so that more parents are able to receive educational news and information easily.
Chung concluded his interview in an upbeat tone as he predicted the future of his company:
“I am proud that IAMSCHOOL is being recognized by the world’s best investor, and I have gained confidence to advance to the global market. Through global service, I want to make "the Korean Wave" in the field of educational applications and to receive appreciation from students, teachers, and parents worldwide.”
2014.09.04 View 9308 -
Professor Won Do Heo on LED Light Technology for Controlling Proteins in Living Cells
With the newly developed LED technology, Professor Won Do Heo at the College of Life Science and Bioengineering, KAIST, was able to suppress cell migration and division when cells are exposed to LED light. This suggests a breakthrough to apply in future cancer cell research.
Professor Heo talked about the impact of his research in the following excerpt from a news article:
“We are already conducting research on the spread of cancer, as well as brain science in animal models with the Light-Activated Reversible Inhibition by Assembled Trap. I believe this technology will be a breakthrough in investigating cancer treatments and the function of neurons in a complex neural network, which existing technologies have not been able to do.”
From EE Times Europe, June 19, 2014
“LED Light Technology Controls Proteins in Living Cells”
http://www.ledlighting-eetimes.com/en/led-light-technology-controls-proteins-in-living-cells.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222909336
2014.06.22 View 7616 -
Professor Sang-Ouk Kim's Research on Carbon Materials Featured in a Philippines Science News
The subject article said that Professor Sang-Ouk Kim of Materials Science Engineering at KAIST “developed a technique to change the nature of the next-generation carbon-based materials. His research has expanded the possibility of carbon-based materials to be used in clothes.”
For details, please refer to the article below:
Centrio Times, June 10, 2014
KAIST scientist develops color changing carbon materials that can be used in clothes
http://www.centriotimes.com/2014/06/kaist-scientist-develops-color-changing-carbon-materials-can-used-clothes.html.
2014.06.15 View 7552 -
KAIST ranked third in the top 100 universities under 50 years old
The Times Higher Education (THE) released on April 30, 2014 its annual ranking of 100 top universities whose history is under 50 years.
KAIST placed 3rd, holding the same spot from last year.
The (THE) 100 Under 50 ranking used 13 indicators across five factors to measure the performance of institutions: research, citations, teaching, international outlook, and industry income. The indicators included research volume and income, reputation, learning environment, staff-to-student ratio, scholarly papers produced, and the percentage of international staff as part of the institution’s faculty.
Phil Baty, editor of the Times ranking, compared younger and older universities as follows:
“Young universities are free to be more agile, lean, and risk-taking, giving them an advantage in a rapidly changing global marketplace. They are also free to offer innovative teaching and focus their research in niche, high-impact areas.”
KAIST and Pohang University of Science and Technology (ranked first) are the only Korean universities that made the ranking list.
For the full list, please go to:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014/one-hundred-under-fifty
This information was provided by the Times Higher Education 100 Under 50.
2014.05.03 View 10742 -
Times Higher Education 2014 World Reputation Rankings
Times Higher Education released the 2014 World Reputation Rankings on March 6, 2014. KAIST moved from the 61-70 band in 2013 to the 51-60 place this year. For details, please visit the link below:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1403/S00091/times-higher-education-2014-world-reputation-rankings.htm
2014.03.07 View 6944 -
Seung-Han Lee, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, receives the best paper award from ISQED 2014
Seung-Han
Lee, a doctoral candidate in the department of electrical engineering at KAIST,
received a Best Paper Award from the International Symposium on Quality
Electronic Design (ISQED), a high-profile international conference started in 2000 to promote innovation and quality in electronic and
engineering designs through inter- and multidisciplinary approaches. The
award ceremony will take place at the 2014 ISQED on March 3-5, 2014 at the Convention
Center in Santa Clara, CA, USA.
Professor
Chong-Min Kyung, an advisor to Seung-Han, expressed his excitement about his student's achievement.
“This is
the first time a Korean has ever received the best paper award at this academic
conference. It’s great news to our student as well as to KAIST.”
The topic
of Lee’s research paper was dynamic cache data management for minimizing the
energy consumption of three-dimensional multi-processor semiconductor chips.
2014.03.03 View 9319 -
World's Largest Web Conference To Be Held in Korea
The 2014 International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2014), the world’s most prestigious academic conference in the field of web, will be held for the first time in Korea. The conference is to be last for five days at Seoul COEX, from 7th to 11th April. International World Wide Web Conference covers a wide range of web-related areas, including technologies, research papers, services and more. Since the first conference in 1994 in Switzerland, it has been held in various parts of North America, Europe, South America and Asia, attracting more than 1000 experts in the field. The 23rd International World Wide Web Conference is managed by the International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee (IW3C2) and co-hosted by KAIST and National Agency for Technology and Standards, as well as sponsored by Korea Information Science Society and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Keynote speakers for this year’s conference include inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, senior vice president of Microsoft, Dr. Qi Lu, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Prof. Christos Faloutsos, as well as Samsung Electronic’s vice president Jong-Deok Choi. In addition to WWW 2014, BigData Innovators Gathering (BIG 2014) and Web for Access (W4A 2014) is also to be held in joint. KAIST Computer Sciences Department’s Prof. Jinwan Jeong, in charge of directing this year’s conference, said “From one-sided 1st generation web to two-way 2nd generation web, such as blogs, and then recently to the 3rd generation web, which include social networks and semantic webs, the web technologies has grown vastly over the past 25 years. WWW 2014 will be the opportunity for Korea to discuss with the world about the informatization and future of the web.” Pre-registration for WWW 2014 can be applied at the official webpage for WWW 2014 (http://www2014.kr) before 17th February.
2014.02.14 View 9513 -
KAIST announced a novel technology to produce gasoline by a metabolically engineered microorganism
A major scientific breakthrough in the development of renewable energy sources and other important chemicals; The research team succeeded in producing 580 mg of gasoline per liter of cultured broth by converting in vivo generated fatty acids
For many decades, we have been relying on fossil resources to produce liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and many industrial and consumer chemicals for daily use. However, increasing strains on natural resources as well as environmental issues including global warming have triggered a strong interest in developing sustainable ways to obtain fuels and chemicals.
Gasoline, the petroleum-derived product that is most widely used as a fuel for transportation, is a mixture of hydrocarbons, additives, and blending agents. The hydrocarbons, called alkanes, consist only of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Gasoline has a combination of straight-chain and branched-chain alkanes (hydrocarbons) consisted of 4-12 carbon atoms linked by direct carbon-carbon bonds.
Previously, through metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli (E. coli), there have been a few research results on the production of long-chain alkanes, which consist of 13-17 carbon atoms, suitable for replacing diesel. However, there has been no report on the microbial production of short-chain alkanes, a possible substitute for gasoline.
In the paper (entitled "Microbial Production of Short-chain Alkanes") published online in Nature on September 29, a Korean research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) reported, for the first time, the development of a novel strategy for microbial gasoline production through metabolic engineering of E. coli.
The research team engineered the fatty acid metabolism to provide the fatty acid derivatives that are shorter than normal intracellular fatty acid metabolites, and introduced a novel synthetic pathway for the biosynthesis of short-chain alkanes. This allowed the development of platform E. coli strain capable of producing gasoline for the first time. Furthermore, this platform strain, if desired, can be modified to produce other products such as short-chain fatty esters and short-chain fatty alcohols.
In this paper, the Korean researchers described detailed strategies for 1) screening of enzymes associated with the production of fatty acids, 2) engineering of enzymes and fatty acid biosynthetic pathways to concentrate carbon flux towards the short-chain fatty acid production, and 3) converting short-chain fatty acids to their corresponding alkanes (gasoline) by introducing a novel synthetic pathway and optimization of culture conditions. Furthermore, the research team showed the possibility of producing fatty esters and alcohols by introducing responsible enzymes into the same platform strain.
Professor Sang Yup Lee said, "It is only the beginning of the work towards sustainable production of gasoline. The titer is rather low due to the low metabolic flux towards the formation of short-chain fatty acids and their derivatives. We are currently working on increasing the titer, yield and productivity of bio-gasoline. Nonetheless, we are pleased to report, for the first time, the production of gasoline through the metabolic engineering of E. coli, which we hope will serve as a basis for the metabolic engineering of microorganisms to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable resources."
This research was supported by the Advanced Biomass Research and Development Center of Korea (ABC-2010-0029799) through the Global Frontier Research Program of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) through the National Research Foundation (NRF), Republic of Korea. Systems metabolic engineering work was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes on Systems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries (NRF-2012-C1AAA001-2012M1A2A2026556) by MSIP through NRF.
Short-Chain Alkanes Generated from Renewable Biomass
This diagram shows the metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for the production of short-chain alkanes (gasoline) from renewable biomass.
Nature Cover Page (September 29th, 2013)
2013.11.04 View 11102 -
Artist in residence program at KAIST
A new and innovative program to support artists’ creative activities was launched by KAIST for the first time in Korean college history.
The artist in residence program is an unusual collaboration between engineers and artists. Out of hundreds of applicants for the program, three writers were selected: a novelist, web-based cartoonist, and screen writer. In late October, they became the residents of KAIST.
Housing and an office are provided for the writers in addition to a monthly cash stipend of 800,000 won for up to six months. A variety of programs will be available as well including a tour of laboratories to help the writers get ideas and inspiration.
KAIST’s Vice President Jun-Ho Oh, the founder of the program, said, “Artists can freshen their imagination, and KAIST members can benefit from them to promote creative and innovative ideas through exchange and collaboration.”
2013.11.04 View 6302 -
KAIST Placed 3rd in the World's Best 100 Emerging Universities
The Times Higher Education (THE) published its world university rankings on June 20, 2013. It is a list of the best 100 universities whose histories are 50 years old or younger. KAIST was ranked 3rd in the list, two places up from the 5th last year. Forbes and Reuters carried a story on the top ten emerging universities out of the listed 100 institutions, highlighting strong showings in the Asian region. For the articles, please see the attached file (Forbes) or click the link (Reuters) below:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/education-university-rankings-idUSL2N0EU1HZ20130619
2013.06.22 View 7132
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The new era of personalized cancer diagnosis and treatment
Professor Tae-Young Yoon
- Succeeded in observing carcinogenic protein at the molecular level
- “Paved the way to customized cancer treatment through accurate analysis of carcinogenic protein”
The joint KAIST research team of Professor Tae Young Yoon of the Department of Physics and Professor Won Do Huh of the Department of Biological Sciences have developed the technology to monitor characteristics of carcinogenic protein in cancer tissue – for the first time in the world.
The technology makes it possible to analyse the mechanism of cancer development through a small amount of carcinogenic protein from a cancer patient. Therefore, a personalised approach to diagnosis and treatment using the knowledge of the specific mechanism of cancer development in the patient may be possible in the future.
Until recently, modern medicine could only speculate on the cause of cancer through statistics. Although developed countries, such as the United States, are known to use a large sequencing technology that analyses the patient’s DNA, identification of the interactions between proteins responsible for causing cancer remained an unanswered question for a long time in medicine.
Firstly, Professor Yoon’s research team has developed a fluorescent microscope that can observe even a single molecule. Then, the “Immunoprecipitation method”, a technology to extract a specific protein exploiting the high affinity between antigens and antibodies was developed. Using this technology and the microscope, “Real-Time Single Molecule co-Immunoprecipitation Method” was created. In this way, the team succeeded in observing the interactions between carcinogenic and other proteins at a molecular level, in real time.
To validate the developed technology, the team investigated Ras, a carcinogenic protein; its mutation statistically is known to cause around 30% of cancers.
The experimental results confirmed that 30-50% of Ras protein was expressed in mouse tumour and human cancer cells. In normal cells, less than 5% of Ras protein was expressed. Thus, the experiment showed that unusual increase in activation of Ras protein induces cancer.
The increase in the ratio of active Ras protein can be inferred from existing research data but the measurement of specific numerical data has never been done before.
The team suggested a new molecular level diagnosis technique of identifying the progress of cancer in patients through measuring the percentage of activated carcinogenic protein in cancer tissue.
Professor Yoon Tae-young said, “This newly developed technology does not require a separate procedure of protein expression or refining, hence the existing proteins in real biological tissues or cancer cells can be observed directly.” He also said, “Since carcinogenic protein can be analyzed accurately, it has opened up the path to customized cancer treatment in the future.”
“Since the observation is possible on a molecular level, the technology confers the advantage that researchers can carry out various examinations on a small sample of the cancer patient.” He added, “The clinical trial will start in December 2012 and in a few years customized cancer diagnosis and treatment will be possible.”
Meanwhile, the research has been published in Nature Communications (February 19). Many researchers from various fields have participated, regardless of the differences in their speciality, and successfully produced interdisciplinary research. Professor Tae Young Yoon of the Department of Physics and Professors Dae Sik Lim and Won Do Huh of Biological Sciences at KAIST, and Professor Chang Bong Hyun of Computational Science of KIAS contributed to developing the technique.
Figure 1: Schematic diagram of observed interactions at the molecular level in real time using fluorescent microscope. The carcinogenic protein from a mouse tumour is fixed on the microchip, and its molecular characteristics are observed live.
Figure 2: Molecular interaction data using a molecular level fluorescent microscope. A signal in the form of spike is shown when two proteins combine. This is monitored live using an Electron Multiplying Charge Coupled Device (EMCCD). It shows signal results in bright dots.
An organism has an immune system as a defence mechanism to foreign intruders. The immune system is activated when unwanted pathogens or foreign protein are in the body. Antibodies form in recognition of the specific antigen to protect itself. Organisms evolved to form antibodies with high specificity to a certain antigen. Antibodies only react to its complementary antigens. The field of molecular biology uses the affinity between antigens and antibodies to extract specific proteins; a technology called immunoprecipitation. Even in a mixture of many proteins, the protein sought can be extracted using antibodies. Thus immunoprecipitation is widely used to detect pathogens or to extract specific proteins.
Technology co-IP is a well-known example that uses immunoprecipitation. The research on interactions between proteins uses co-IP in general. The basis of fixing the antigen on the antibody to extract antigen protein is the same as immunoprecipitation. Then, researchers inject and observe its reaction with the partner protein to observe the interactions and precipitate the antibodies. If the reaction occurs, the partner protein will be found with the antibodies in the precipitations. If not, then the partner protein will not be found. This shows that the two proteins interact.
However, the traditional co-IP can be used to infer the interactions between the two proteins although the information of the dynamics on how the reaction occurs is lost. To overcome these shortcomings, the Real-Time Single Molecule co-IP Method enables observation on individual protein level in real time. Therefore, the significance of the new technique is in making observation of interactions more direct and quantitative.
Additional Figure 1: Comparison between Conventional co-IP and Real-Time Single Molecule co-IP
2013.04.01 View 17426