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The 8th KINC Fusion Research Awardees
The KAIST Institute for NanoCentury held the 8th KINC Fusion Research Award in order to encourage professors’ convergence studies and instill students’ willingness to research. The award ceremony took place in the KI Building at KAIST on March 13.
The KINC Fusion Research Award selects the most outstanding convergence studies among research undertaken last year, and awards researchers who participated in that research.
The 8th KINC Fusion Research Award went to Professor Yoon Sung Nam from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor Inkyu Park from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Their research reported the spontaneous self-biomineralization of palladium (Pd) ions on a filamentous virus to form ligand-free Pd nanowires without reducing reagents or using additional surface stabilizers (Title: Virus-Templated Self-Mineralization of Ligand-Free Colloidal Palladium Nanostructures for High Surface Activity and Stability, Advanced Functional Materials (2017)).
Professor Hee-Tae Jung, the Director of KAIST Institute for the NanoCentury and the host of the KINC Fusion Research Award said, “Convergence will be the crucial keyword that will lead to revolutionary change. Hence, the importance of convergence study should be improved. We will put every effort into creating a research environment for increasing convergence study.
The KAIST Institute for the NanoCentury was established in June 2006 under the KAIST Institute with a mission of creating convergence study by tearing down boarders among departments and carrying out interdisciplinary joint research. Currently, approximately 90 professors from 14 departments participate the institute. It aims to become a hub of university institutes for nano-fusion research.
2018.03.19 View 10160 -
Professor Emeritus Jung Ki Park Won the IBA Technology Award 2018
(Professor Emeritus Jung Ki Park)
Professor Emeritus Jung Ki Park from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering received the IBA Technology Award from the International Battery Association (IBA).
IBA 2018 was held from March 11 to 16 on Jeju Island, which was the first time it was hosted in Korea. The conference was an excellent opportunity to let the world know the level of the Korean rechargeable battery industry and its technology.
Professor Park delivered his keynote speech titled Advances in Lithium Batteries in Korea at the conference and received the IBA Technology Award as the first Korean recipient.
Professor Park is a world-renowned scholar who was a groundbreaker in the rechargeable battery industry. He was recognized by the IBA Award Committee for his contributions carrying out research and development, fostering competent people, and enhancing the lithium rechargeable battery industry in Korea over the last 30 years.
Professor Park said, “It is my great honor to receive this award, which is the best international award in the field of rechargeable batteries. I would like to share this with my colleagues and students. As competition in the rechargeable industry intensifies, systemic cooperation among industries, academia, and government is needed for the continued development of the battery industry in Korea.
2018.03.19 View 5845 -
Scientist of March, Professor Hee-Seung Lee
(Professor Hee-Seung Lee)
Professor Hee-Seung Lee from the Department of Chemistry at KAIST received the ‘Science and Technology Award of the Month’ awarded by the Ministry of ICT and Science, and the National Research Foundation of Korea for March 2018.
Professor Lee has been recognized for successfully producing peptide-based molecular machines, which used to be made of metals.
The methodology can be translated into magnetotactic behavior at the macroscopic scale, which is reminiscent of magnetosomes in magnetotactic bacteria.
The team employed foldectures, self-assembled molecular architectures of β-peptide foldamers, to develop the peptide-based molecular machines that uniformly align with respect to an applied static magnetic field.
Professor Lee said, “Molecular machines are widely used in the field of medical engineering or material science; however, there were limitations for developing the machines using magnetic fields. By developing peptide-based molecular machines, we were able to develop body-friendly molecular machines.”
Every month, the Ministry of ICT and Science and the National Research Foundation of Korea award a cash prize worth 10,000,000 KRW to a scientist who has contributed to science and technology with outstanding research and development performance.
2018.03.15 View 7823 -
Seong-Tae Kim Wins Robert-Wagner All-Conference Best Paper Award
(Ph.D. candidate Seong-Tae Kim)
Ph.D. candidate Seong-Tae Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering won the Robert Wagner All-Conference Best Student Paper Award during the 2018 International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Medical Imaging Conference, which was held in Houston last month.
Kim, supervised by Professor Yong Man Ro, received the award for his paper in the category of computer-aided diagnosis. His paper, titled “ICADx: Interpretable Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Breast Masses”, was selected as the best paper out of 900 submissions. The conference selects the best paper in nine different categories. His research provides new insights on diagnostic technology to detect breast cancer powered by deep learning.
2018.03.15 View 8630 -
Recognizing Seven Different Face Emotions on a Mobile Platform
(Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo)
A KAIST research team succeeded in achieving face emotion recognition on a mobile platform by developing an AI semiconductor IC that processes two neural networks on a single chip.
Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo and his team (Primary researcher: Jinmook Lee Ph. D. student) from the School of Electrical Engineering developed a unified deep neural network processing unit (UNPU).
Deep learning is a technology for machine learning based on artificial neural networks, which allows a computer to learn by itself, just like a human.
The developed chip adjusts the weight precision (from 1 bit to 16 bit) of a neural network inside of the semiconductor in order to optimize energy efficiency and accuracy. With a single chip, it can process a convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) simultaneously. CNN is used for categorizing and recognizing images while RNN is for action recognition and speech recognition, such as time-series information.
Moreover, it enables an adjustment in energy efficiency and accuracy dynamically while recognizing objects. To realize mobile AI technology, it needs to process high-speed operations with low energy, otherwise the battery can run out quickly due to processing massive amounts of information at once. According to the team, this chip has better operation performance compared to world-class level mobile AI chips such as Google TPU. The energy efficiency of the new chip is 4 times higher than the TPU.
In order to demonstrate its high performance, the team installed UNPU in a smartphone to facilitate automatic face emotion recognition on the smartphone. This system displays a user’s emotions in real time. The research results for this system were presented at the 2018 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco on February 13.
Professor Yoo said, “We have developed a semiconductor that accelerates with low power requirements in order to realize AI on mobile platforms. We are hoping that this technology will be applied in various areas, such as object recognition, emotion recognition, action recognition, and automatic translation. Within one year, we will commercialize this technology.”
2018.03.09 View 6727 -
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: Between Reality and Virtuality
A workshop on blockchain and cryptocurrency, one of the 4th Industrial Revolution Workshop Series, was held at the KAIST main campus on March 7.
Experts from industry, academia, and research gathered and shared their opinions about blockchain technology, which is currently gaining huge attention along with cryptocurrency.
During the workshop, four KAIST professors and four experts from institutes and business examined the scope on the possibility of blockchain, technology for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Moreover, they discussed a variety of issues including mining, wallets, cryptocurrency, information security, smart contracts, and ICOs.
In a previous blockchain tutorial, Professor Yongdae Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST and Professor Hyoungshick Kim from Sungkyunkwan University opened up a blockchain tutorial which provided a technical understanding of blockchain, such as the birth of cryptocurrency, algorithm design, and exchange methods.
Professor Jungho Kim, who is in charge of this event, said, “This workshop will broaden the understanding of blockchain, which can provide a foundation for a national growth engine.”
2018.03.07 View 6658 -
MoU Signed by the Republic of Korea Army and KAIST
(From left: KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin and ROKA Chief of Staff Youngwoo Kim)
On March 7, the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) and KAIST signed an MoU and opened special sessions dedicated to the army in order to reinforce research and development capacities.
The close partnership between KAIST and ROKA will provide an opportunity to establish advanced combat development systems.
Through the MoU, signed by KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin and ROKA Chief of Staff Youngwoo Kim, both organizations will discuss new opportunities for cooperation between academia and military and establish an institute and its curriculum.
KAIST is offering special sessions for the army March 5-9, where about 150 executives from ROKA, including the headquarters, education and training command, and logistics command, will participate.
These session are expected to enhance the army’s capabilities through education on cutting-edge equipment that will emerge during the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The director of the KAIST Security Convergence Institute, Soo Hyun Kim, said, “KAIST and ROKA will plan and operate various programs together though this partnership as well as special sessions. I hope this cooperation will be an opportunity to enhance the combat development of ROKA.”
2018.03.07 View 5502 -
Activation of Bystander Immune Cells during Acute Hepatitis A.
A KAIST research team has identified a process of tissue damage caused by bystander immune cells in acute viral infections. This research will pave the way for research to understand the principles of tissue damage in viral infections and immune diseases, and can point toward a possible therapeutic target for the treatment.
Upon viral infection, viral replication itself destroys human cells, but in some cases, viral replication is not the direct cause of the tissue damage. In particular, the destruction of infected cells is the primary cause of tissue damage during non-cytopathic viral infections such as hepatitis A virus, hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus. However, the underlying pathological mechanisms involved in the tissue damage during viral infections have not been fully elucidated.
Specificity is one of the most important characteristics of the immune system. In general, infection from a certain virus specifically activates immune cells targeting the virus, while other immune cells specific to different viruses remain inactive.
An immune cell not specific to an infected virus is called a bystander immune cell. A phenomenon that activates irrelevant immune cells not originally targeting the infecting virus, called the activation of bystander immune cells, is already known to the world; however, its clinical significance has not been investigated thoroughly.
Professor Eui-Cheol Shin and Professor Su-Hyung Park from the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering analyzed patients with acute hepatitis A, in collaboration with Chung-Ang University Hospital.
The team found not only immune cells specifically targeting the hepatitis A virus were activated, but also bystander immune cells were activated and involved in the damaging of liver tissues during acute hepatitis A.
According to the research, when a person is infected with hepatitis A virus, hepatitis A virus-infected cells produce IL-15, which induces the activation of bystander immune cells. Activated bystander immune cells exert innate-like cytotoxicity, triggered by activating receptors NKG2D and NKp30 and this can lead to liver injury.
Through describing the cause of excessive tissue damage during acute viral hepatitis, the research outcome is expected to provide critical contributions for the development of potential therapeutic intervention that can minimize tissue damage caused by viral hepatitis and immune disorders.
Professor Shin said, “This is a novel research case that discovered the clinical significance of bystander immune cell activation, which was previously unknown. We will continue to work on establishing treatments which could prevent tissue damage in viral and immune diseases in the future.”
This research was published in Immunity on January 2.
Figure 1. Graphical abstract
2018.03.06 View 6324 -
The 22nd Humanistic Education Opens to Daejeon Citizens
The KAIST Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences will open up the 22nd Humanistic Education for Citizens every week from March 21 to April 25.
People can apply for this program through its website (http://hss.kaist.ac.kr), starting from March 12. Anyone living in Daejeon can participate in this program at no charge but the program is limited to 100 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis.
KAIST Humanistic Education for Citizens was established in 2012 and is held four times during a year to reinforce bonding with local citizens and enhance cultural refinement and an appreciation of literature.
With the topic ‘Are News Facts?” the seminar has invited six lecturers, including Researcher Soo Young Kim from the Institute of Communication Research, to navigate various issues that smart news users need to know in this era of massive news consumption.
The lecture is dedicated to discussing a current hot issue, the phenomenon of fake news, from various perspectives and to promote smart news consumption.
It will also help to provide an understanding of legal and policy changes regarding media production and distribution.
Professor Donghwan Ko, who is also the dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences said, “The lectures will provide information on various issues that people need to know more about for smart news consumption in the “infoglut” era from media, psychological, social, and legal perspectives.”
The lectures will be held every Wednesday at 3pm in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
2018.03.06 View 4978 -
KAIST Professors Selected as Y-KAST Members
Professor YongKeun Park, Professor Bumjoon Kim, Professor Keon Jae Lee, and Professor Young Seok Ju were selected as the newest members of the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology (Y-KAST).
The Korean Academy of Science and Technology, an academic institution of professional experts, selected 26 promising scientists under the age of 43 to join Y-KAST. and four KAIST professors were included in the list.
The newest members were conferred on February 26.
Research Field
Name
Natural Sciences
YongKeun Park (Dept. of Physics)
Engineering
Bumjoon Kim (Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
Agricultural & Fishery Sciences
Keon Jae Lee (Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering)
Medical Sciences
Young Seok Ju (Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering)
2018.03.05 View 7920 -
KAIST Finds the Principle of Electric Wind in Plasma
(From left: Professor Wonho Choe and PhD Sanghoo Park)
A KAIST team identified the basic principle of electric wind in plasma. This finding will contribute to developing technology in various applications of plasma, including fluid control technology.
Professor Wonho Choe from the Department of Physics and his team identified the main principle of neutral gas flow in plasma, known as ‘electric wind’, in collaboration with Professor Se Youn Moon’s team at Chonbuk National University.
Electric wind in plasma is a well-known consequence of interactions arising from collisions between charged particles (electrons or ions) and neutral particles. It refers to the flow of neutral gas that occurs when charged particles accelerate and collide with a neutral gas.
This is a way to create air movement without mechanical movement, such as fan wings, and it is gaining interest as a next-generation technology to replace existing fans. However, there was no experimental evidence of the cause.
To identify the cause, the team used atmospheric pressure plasma. As a result, the team succeeded in identifying streamer propagation and space charge drift from electrohydrodynamic (EHD) force in a qualitative manner.
According to the team, streamer propagation has very little effect on electric wind, but space charge drift that follows streamer propagation and collapse was the main cause of electric wind.
The team also identified that electrons, instead of negatively charged ions, were key components of electric wind generation in certain plasmas.
Furthermore, electric wind with the highest speed of 4 m/s was created in a helium jet plasma, which is one fourth the speed of a typhoon. These results indicate that the study could provide basic principles to effectively control the speed of electric wind.
Professor Choe said, “These findings set a significant foundation to understand the interactions between electrons or ions and neutral particles that occur in weakly ionized plasmas, such as atmospheric pressure plasmas. This can play an important role in expanding the field of fluid-control applications using plasmas which becomes economically and commercially interest.”
This research, led by PhD Sanghoo Park, was published online in Nature Communications on January 25.
Figure 1. Plasma jet image
Figure 2. The differences in electric wind speeds and voltage pulse
2018.03.02 View 6935 -
Successful Synthesis of Gamma-Lanctam Rings from Hydrocarbons
(The team of Professor Chang, far right, at the Department of Chemistry)
KAIST chemists have designed a novel strategy to synthesize ring-shaped cyclic molecules, highly sought-after by pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and known as gamma-lactams. This study describes how these five-membered rings can be prepared from inexpensive and readily available feedstock hydrocarbons, as well as from complex organic molecules, such as amino acids and steroids.
Gamma-lactams find several applications in medicinal, synthetic, and material chemistry. For example, they are included in a large number of pharmaceutically active compounds with antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumoral functions. This research was published in Science on March 2.
Conversion of hydrocarbons into nitrogen-containing compounds is an important area of research, where the challenge lies in breaking strong carbon-hydrogen (C−H) bonds, and converting them into carbon-nitrogen (C–N) bonds in a controlled fashion. For this reason, hydrocarbons are difficult to use as starting materials, albeit the fact that they exist in large quantities in nature.
Over the last 35 years, chemists have found ways of converting simple hydrocarbons into nitrogen-containing rings, such as indoles or pyrrolidines, but gamma-lactams proved impossible to prepare using the same approaches. Researchers hypothesized that such failure was due to alternative chemical pathways that steer the reaction away from the wanted rings: The reaction intermediate (carbonylnitrene) quickly breaks down into unsought products. Using computer models of the desired and undesired reaction pathways, the team found a strategy to completely shut down the latter in order to obtain the longed-for gamma-lactams. For the first time, these four carbons and one nitrogen cyclic molecules were obtained directly from simple feedstock chemicals.
Led by Professor Chang Sukbok at the Department of Chemistry, the team designed the winning reaction with the help of computer simulations that analyze the reaction mechanisms and calculate the energy required for the reaction to take place. According to such computer predictions, the reaction could follow three pathways, leading to the formation of either the desired gamma-lactam, an unwanted product (isocyanate), or the degradation of the catalyst caused by the substrate reacting with the catalyst backbone. Combining experimental observations and detailed computer simulations, the team designed an iridium-based catalyst, highly selective for the gamma-lactam formation. In this way, the two undesired pathways were systematically shut down, leaving the formation of the nitrogen-containing ring as the only possible outcome. Professor Chang is also in charge of the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS).
“With this work we offer a brand new solution to a long-standing challenge and demonstrate the power of what we call mechanism-based reaction development,” explains Professor Baik Mu-Hyun, a corresponding author of the study.
Beyond using cheap feedstock hydrocarbons as substrates, the team was also successful in converting amino acids, steroids, and other bio-relevant molecules into gamma-lactams, which might find a variety of applications as plant insecticide, drugs against parasitic worms, or anti-aging agents. This new synthetic technology gives much easier access to these complicated molecules and will enable the development of potential drugs in a much shorter amount of time at a lower cost.
Figure 1: Selective amidation reaction using newly designed iridium (Ir) catalysts. Abundant in nature Hydrocarbons are used as substrates to synthesize nitrogen-containing ring, called gamma-lactams.
Figure 2: Three possible reaction pathways and energy barriers predicted by computational chemistry. The scientists developed new iridium-based catalysts that are highly selective for the C–H insertion pathway which leads to the desired gamma-lactam molecules.
Figure 3: Interesting gamma-lactams derived from natural and unnatural amino acids, steroids, etc., which may be used to protect plants against insects, fight parasitic worms, or as anti-aging agents.
2018.03.02 View 7762