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OUIC Presents the Six Most Promising Techs Transferrable to Local SMEs
KAIST will showcase the six most promising technologies for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on November 14 in the Academic Cultural Complex. To strengthen the competitive edge of local SMEs in Daejeon, the Office of University-Industry made a survey of their technological needs and came up with the six most promising technologies. Developers will introduce their technologies during the session.Besides the introduction of the promising technologies, the session will also provide a program named University to Business (U2B) to match up technologies according to the SMEs’ needs. SMEs who wish to engage in technology transfers can receive counseling and other support programs during the session.First, Professor Seok-Hyung Bae from the Department of Industrial Design will present a technology for controlling cooperation robots. Professor Bae inserted flexible materials between the controllers to allow robots to use both hands stably and operate more accurately and swiftly. It can be applied to automatic robots, industrial robots, and service robots.Professor Hyun Myung from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering will demonstrate a robot navigation system in a dynamic indoor and outdoor environment, which can be applied to robotics in logistics, smart factories, and autonomous vehicles. Providing robust simultaneous localization and mapping systems, this technology shows high-performing navigation with low-cost sensors.Meanwhile, Professor Siyoung Choi from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering will introduce a technology for forming stable adhesive emulsions. An emulsion is a stable mixture of water and oil. Conventionally, a small amount of surfactant is added to stabilize an emulsion. Here, Professor Choi developed a stable emulsion system without using any chemical substances. This technology can be applied to various fields, including the cosmetics, pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and painting industries. The session will also present smart IoTs platform technology developed by Professor Jinhong Yang from the KAIST Institute for IT Convergence. His technology minimizes errors occurring when multiple IoT devices are connected simultaneously. Professor Yong Keun Park from the Department of Physics will introduce a technology for measuring glycated hemoglobin by using the optical properties of red blood cells. This technology can be applied to make low-cost, small-sized measuring equipment. It can also be used for vitro diagnoses including diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, tumors, kidney disease, and infectious diseases. Professor Yong Man Ro from the School of Electrical Engineering will show technology for biometric access control. Conventional technologies for face recognition fall behind other biometrics. Professor Ro and his team developed a facial dynamics interpreting network which allows very accurate facial recognition by interpreting the relationships between facial local dynamics and estimating facial traits. This technology can be applied to security and communication in finance, computers, and information system.KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin said, “KAIST will continue to support SMEs to have stronger competitiveness in the market. Through technology transfer, we will drive innovation in technological commercialization where a university’s research and development creates economic value.”
2018.11.13 View 7570 -
Team KAT Wins the Autonomous Car Challenge
(Team KAT receiving the Presidential Award)
A KAIST team won the 2018 International Autonomous Car Challenge for University Students held in Daegu on November 2.
Professor Seung-Hyun Kong from the ChoChunShik Graduate School of Green Transportation and his team participated in this contest with the team named KAT (KAIST Autonomous Technologies). The team received the Presidential Award with a fifty million won cash prize and an opportunity for a field trip abroad.
The competition was conducted on actual roads with Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), which incorporate autonomous driving technologies and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication system.
In this contest, the autonomous vehicles were given a mission to pick up passengers or parcels. Through the V2X communication, the contest gave current location of the passengers or parcels, their destination, and service profitability according to distance and level of service difficulty.
The participating vehicles had to be equipped very accurate and robust navigation system since they had to drive on narrow roads as well as go through tunnels where GPS was not available. Moreover, they had to use camera-based recognition technology that was invulnerable to backlight as the contest was in the late afternoon.
The contest scored the mission in the following way: the vehicles get points if they pick up passengers and safely drop them off at their destination; on the other hand, points are deducted when they violate lanes or traffic lights. It will be a major black mark if a participant sitting in the driver’s seat needs to get involved in driving due to a technical issue.
Youngbo Shim of KAT said, “We believe that we got major points for technical superiority in autonomous driving and our algorithm for passenger selection.”
This contest, hosted by Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, was the first international competition for autonomous driving on actual roads. A total of nine teams participated in the final contest, four domestic teams and five teams allied with overseas universities such as Tsinghua University, Waseda University, and Nanyang Technological University.
Professor Kong said, “There is still a long way to go for fully autonomous vehicles that drive flexibly under congested traffic conditions. However, we will continue to our research in order to achieve high-quality autonomous driving technology.”
(Team KAT getting ready for the challenge)
2018.11.06 View 9488 -
Permanent, Wireless Self-charging System Using NIR Band
(Professor Jung-Yong Lee from the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability)
As wearable devices are emerging, there are numerous studies on wireless charging systems. Here, a KAIST research team has developed a permanent, wireless self-charging platform for low-power wearable electronics by converting near-infrared (NIR) band irradiation to electrical energy. This novel technology can be applied to flexible, wearable charging systems without needing any attachments.
Colloidal-quantum-dots (CQDs) are promising materials for manufacturing semiconductors; in particular, PbS-based CQDs have facile optical tunability from the visible to infrared wavelength region. Hence, they can be applied to various devices, such as lighting, photovoltaics (PVs), and photodetectors.
Continuous research on CQD-based optoelectronic devices has increased their power conversion efficiency (PCE) to 12%; however, applicable fields have not yet been found for them. Meanwhile, wearable electronic devices commonly face the problem of inconvenient charging systems because users have to constantly charge batteries attached to an energy source.
A joint team led by Professor Jung-Yong Lee from the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability and Jang Wok Choi from Seoul National University decided to apply CQD PVs, which have high quantum efficiency in NIR band to self-charging systems on wearable devices.
They employed a stable and efficient NIR energy conversion strategy. The system was comprised of a PbS CQD-based PV module, a flexible interdigitated lithium-ion battery, and various types of NIR-transparent films.
The team removed the existing battery from the already commercialized wearable healthcare bracelet and replaced it with the proposed self-charging system. They confirmed that the system can be applied to a low power wearable device via the NIR band.
There have been numerous platforms using solar irradiation, but the newly developed platform has more advantages because it allows conventional devices to be much more comfortable to wear and charged easily in everyday life using various irradiation sources for constant charging.
With this aspect, the proposed platform facilitates more flexible designs, which are the important component for actual commercialization. It also secures higher photostability and efficient than existing structures.
Professor Lee said, “By using the NIR band, we proposed a new approach to solve charging system issues of wearable devices. I believe that this platform will be a novel platform for energy conversion and that its application can be further extended to various fields, including mobiles, IoTs, and drones.”
This research, led by PhD Se-Woong Baek and M.S. candidate Jungmin Cho, was published in Advanced Materials on May 11.
Figure 1. a) Conceptual NIR-driven self-charging system including a flexible CQD PVs module and an interdigitatedly structured LIB. b) Photographic images of a conventional wearable healthcare bracelet and a self-charging system-integrated wearable device.
Figure 2. Illustration of the CQD PVs structure and performance of the wireless self-charging platform.
2018.10.08 View 7516 -
Center for Industrial Future Strategy Takes Off at KAIST
(Professor Wonjoon Kim from the School of Business and Technology Management)
Professors from KAIST and major international universities launched a mega-scale research center focusing on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, named the Center for Industrial Future Strategy (CIFS).
This center is funded by the National Research Foundation Korea and will receive 2.25 billion KRW over four years.
Directed by Professor Wonjoon Kim from the School of Business and Technology Management, the center is comprised of ten top-tier researchers and four research associates, including Professor Hawoon Jeong (KAIST), Professor Scott Stern (MIT), Professor Aaron Chatterji (Duke University), Dr. Yong Suk Lee (Stanford University) and Professor Hyejin Youn (Northwestern University).
The center will conduct research on technical, social, and economic changes derived by a new paradigm of technological innovation.
Moreover, they will study policies and strategies in relation to innovation in the corporate and government sectors to achieve economic growth in a sustainable manner. The center will also propose policies and strategies in a variety of economic and industrial settings to establish a sustainable and global innovation ecosystem.
To carry out these studies successfully, CIFS will further expand the AIEA-NBER Conference with the Asia Innovation and Entrepreneurship Association (AIEA) and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in which numerous Nobel Laureates in Economics are affiliated. They will also comprise thematic research teams with co-founding universities to build stronger cooperation with one another.
Besides the academic cooperation, the center will also build partnerships with international organizations, including the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to carry out their missions at multilateral levels.
Their research topics include changes to value chains in a new paradigm of technological innovation, labor market changes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, sharing economies and social interests, big data, artificial intelligence & privacy policy, and innovation & ethical and institutional countermeasures to AI technology.
Professor Kim said, “The new paradigm of technological innovation is evolving social, economic, and industrial structures, such as R&D, industry, technology, labor, finance, and institutions. The Center will contribute to proposing policies and strategies so that Korea, as well as the international community, can take appropriate measures to these big changes.”
2018.09.11 View 9098 -
Improved Efficiency of CQD Solar Cells Using an Organic Thin Film
(from left: Professor Jung-Yong Lee and Dr. Se-Woong Baek)
Recently, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of colloidal quantum dot (CQD)-based solar cells has been enhanced, paving the way for their commercialization in various fields; nevertheless, they are still a long way from being commercialized due to their efficiency not matching their stability. In this research, a KAIST team achieved highly stable and efficient CQD-based solar cells by using an amorphous organic layer to block oxygen and water permeation.
CQD-based solar cells are light-weight, flexible, and they boost light harvesting by absorbing near-infrared lights. Especially, they draw special attention for their optical properties controlled efficiently by changing the quantum dot sizes. However, they are still incompatible with existing solar cells in terms of efficiency, stability, and cost. Therefore, there is great demand for a novel technology that can simultaneously improve both PCE and stability while using an inexpensive electrode material.
Responding to this demand, Professor Jung-Yong Lee from the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability and his team introduced a technology to improve the efficiency and stability of CQD-based solar cells.
The team found that an amorphous organic thin film has a strong resistance to oxygen and water. Using these properties, they employed this doped organic layer as a top-hole selective layer (HSL) for the PbS CQD solar cells, and confirmed that the hydro/oxo-phobic properties of the layer efficiently protected the PbS layer. According to the molecular dynamics simulations, the layer significantly postponed the oxygen and water permeation into the PbS layer. Moreover, the efficient injection of the holes in the layer reduced interfacial resistance and improved performance.
With this technology, the team finally developed CQD-based solar cells with excellent stability. The PCE of their device stood at 11.7% and maintained over 90% of its initial performance when stored for one year under ambient conditions.
Professor Lee said, “This technology can be also applied to QD LEDs and Perovskite devices. I hope this technology can hasten the commercialization of CQD-based solar cells.”
This research, led by Dr. Se-Woong Baek and a Ph.D. student, Sang-Hoon Lee, was published in Energy & Environmental Science on May 10.
Figure 1. The schematic of the equilibrated structure of the amorphous organic film
Figure 2. Schematic illustration of CQD-based solar cells and graphs showing their performance
2018.08.27 View 7293 -
Robotic Herding of a Flock of Birds Using Drones
A joint team from KAIST, Caltech, and Imperial College London, presents a drone with a new algorithm to shepherd birds safely away from airports
Researchers made a new algorithm for enabling a single robotic unmanned aerial vehicle to herd a flock of birds away from a designated airspace. This novel approach allows a single autonomous quadrotor drone to herd an entire flock of birds away without breaking their formation.
Professor David Hyunchul Shim at KAIST in collaboration with Professor Soon-Jo Chung of Caltech and Professor Aditya Paranjape of Imperial College London investigated the problem of diverting a flock of birds away from a prescribed area, such as an airport, using a robotic UVA. A novel boundary control strategy called the m-waypoint algorithm was introduced for enabling a single pursuer UAV to safely herd the flock without fragmenting it.
The team developed the herding algorithm on the basis of macroscopic properties of the flocking model and the response of the flock. They tested their robotic autonomous drone by successfully shepherding an entire flock of birds out of a designated airspace near KAIST’s campus in Daejeon, South Korea. This study is published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
“It is quite interesting, and even awe-inspiring, to monitor how birds react to threats and collectively behave against threatening objects through the flock. We made careful observations of flock dynamics and interactions between flocks and the pursuer. This allowed us to create a new herding algorithm for ideal flight paths for incoming drones to move the flock away from a protected airspace,” said Professor Shim, who leads the Unmanned Systems Research Group at KAIST.
Bird strikes can threaten the safety of airplanes and their passengers. Korean civil aircraft suffered more than 1,000 bird strikes between 2011 and 2016. In the US, 142,000 bird strikes destroyed 62 civilian airplanes, injured 279 people, and killed 25 between 1990 and 2013. In the UK in 2016, there were 1,835 confirmed bird strikes, about eight for every 10,000 flights. Bird and other wildlife collisions with aircraft cause well over 1.2 billion USD in damages to the aviation industry worldwide annually. In the worst case, Canadian geese knocked out both engines of a US Airway jet in January 2009. The flight had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River.
Airports and researchers have continued to reduce the risk of bird strikes through a variety of methods. They scare birds away using predators such as falcons or loud noises from small cannons or guns. Some airports try to prevent birds from coming by ridding the surrounding areas of crops that birds eat and hide in.
However, birds are smart. “I was amazed with the birds’ capability to interact with flying objects. We thought that only birds of prey have a strong sense of maneuvering with the prey. But our observation of hundreds of migratory birds such as egrets and loons led us to reach the hypothesis that they all have similar levels of maneuvering with the flying objects. It will be very interesting to collaborate with ornithologists to study further with birds’ behaviors with aerial objects,” said Professor Shim. “Airports are trying to transform into smart airports. This algorithm will help improve safety for the aviation industry. In addition, this will also help control avian influenza that plagues farms nationwide every year,” he stressed.
For this study, two drones were deployed. One drone performed various types of maneuvers around the flocks as a pursuer of herding drone, while a surveillance drone hovered at a high altitude with a camera pointing down for recording the trajectories of the pursuer drone and the birds.
During the experiments on egrets, the birds made frequent visits to a hunting area nearby and a large number of egrets were found to return to their nests at sunset. During the time, the team attempted to fly the herding drone in various directions with respect to the flock.
The drone approached the flock from the side. When the birds noticed the drone, they diverted from their original paths and flew at a 45˚ angle to their right. When the birds noticed the drone while it was still far away, they adjusted their paths horizontally and made smaller changes in the vertical direction. In the second round of the experiment on loons, the drone flew almost parallel to the flight path of a flock of birds, starting from an initial position located just off the nominal flight path. The birds had a nominal flight speed that was considerably higher than that of the drone so the interaction took place over a relatively short period of time.
Professor Shim said, “I think we just completed the first step of the research. For the next step, more systems will be developed and integrated for bird detection, ranging, and automatic deployment of drones.” “Professor Chung at Caltech is a KAIST graduate. And his first student was Professor Paranjape who now teaches at Imperial. It is pretty interesting that this research was made by a KAIST faculty member, an alumnus, and his student on three different continents,” he said.
(Figure A. Case 1: drone approaches the herd with sufficient distance to induce horizontal deviation)
(Figure B. Case 2: drone approaches the herd abruptly to cause vertical deviation)
2018.08.23 View 8892 -
'K-FLEX' Makes a Splash as a Flexible Endoscopic Surgical Robot
( Robot arms perform an incision during an ex-vivo test on a porcine gallbladder.)
K-FLEX, a flexible endoscopic surgical robot developed by the KAIST Future Medical Robotics Research Center, opens a new chapter for minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery with its precision control of 3.7 mm diameter robotic arms. The two arms, placing at the end of flexible endoscopes, highlight impeccable precision control and robust mini-joint design technologies. While cruising through the complicated inner body pliably, it carries out procedures on the spot with its robotic arms.
The research team under Professor Dong-Soo Kwon recently tested the device in-vivo, conducting a complicated endoscopic procedure dissecting a porcine gallbladder in collaboration with Professor Dae-Kyung Son of the National Cancer Center. The arms successfully manipulated the tissue safely.
During the test, K-FLEX, inserted through an incision in the navel, snaked through the narrow passages of the complicated inner organs. When reaching the desired spot, one of the robot arms pushed aside and held up the nearby tissue to secure proper vision and space for the procedure. Meanwhile, a cautery needle mounted at the tip of the other hand removed the lesion tissue on the gallbladder. The tiny camera installed at the front of the robot arms relayed the internal conditions. The full procedure was able to be monitored from the master console.
The two arms are placed onto 4.2 mm internal channels of an endoscope which is 17 mm in diameter. The arms can be deployable forward and backward and are extendable up to 7 cm for performing procedures.
K-FLEX is made of domestically produced components, except for the endoscopic module. It will expand new medical robotics research while offering novel therapeutic capabilities for endoscopes.
Flexible endoscopes are very promising for surgical applications because they can treat areas thought to be difficult to reach, such as the posterior side of an organ. Current rigid-type laparoscopic tools could not reach a lesion if it occurs in such serpentine and complicated areas. However, this flexible endoscopic surgery robot will bypass obstacles to reach the troubled area.
The ability to seamlessly integrate effective actuation into millimeter-scale deployable mechanisms fits well with minimally invasive surgical procedures. This flexible endoscopic surgery robot, only half the size of current laparoscopic surgical robots, is deployable into natural orifices such as the mouth, anus, and vagina without requiring external incisions. Laparoscopic devices and robots require at least three to four external incisions to insert the devices; however, the applicability of internal incisions reduces the possibility of complications arousing from excessive bleeding and bacterial infections.
Despite these advantages, it has remained challenging to manipulate the robotic arms of flexible endoscopes with integrated grabbing force, flexibility, and multiple degrees of freedom for clinical environments.
The team focused on smaller but smarter devices. Dr. Min-Ho Hwang, a principal researcher of K-FLEX, said that developing tiny robots that are able to generate the necessary forces without compromising safety was the challenge. They created a robust but smaller-joint technology that can exert a relatively greater force even into millimeter scale.
Professor Kwon said, “K-FLEX is the first flexible endoscopic surgery robot in Korea. We already confirmed the clinical adaptation through ex vivo tests and will see complete commercialization in two to three years.” The team believes K-FLEX will be very effective for surgery on incipient cancer cells in the stomach, colon, and thyroid.
Professor Kwon and his eight researchers recently established a tech start-up called EasyEndo Surgical Inc. with these core technologies. In June, K-FLEX won the ‘Best Application Award’ and the ‘Overall Winner’ at the Surgical Robot Challenge 2018 held at Imperial College London. The Korea Research Foundation funded the research on K-FLEX.
(The team conducts a procedure using K-FLEX, flexible endoscopic surgical robot.)
2018.08.17 View 7832 -
Participation in the 2018 Bio-Digital City Workshop in Paris
(A student make a presentatiion during the Bio-Digital City Workshop in Paris last month.)
KAIST students explored ideas for developing future cities during the 2018 Bio-Digital City Workshop held in Paris last month.
This international workshop hosted by Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie was held under the theme “Biomimicry, Digital City and Big Data.” During the workshop from July 10 to July 20, students teamed up with French counterparts to develop innovative urban design ideas. Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie is the largest science museum in Europe and is operated by Universcience, a specialized institute of science and technology in France.
Professor Seongju Chang from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor Jihyun Lee of the Graduate School of Culture Technology Students led the students group.
Participants presented their ideas and findings on new urban solutions that combine biomimetic systems and digital technology. Each student group analyzed a special natural ecosystem such as sand dunes, jellyfish communities, or mangrove forests and conducted research to extract algorithms for constructing sustainable urban building complexes based on the results. The extracted algorithm was used to conceive a sustainable building complex forming a part of the urban environment by applying it to the actual Parisian city segment given as the virtual site for the workshop.
Students from diverse background in both countries participated in this convergence workshop. KAIST students included Ph.D. candidate Hyung Min Cho, undergraduates Min-Woo Jeong, Seung-Hwan Cha, and Sang-Jun Park from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, undergraduate Kyeong-Keun Seo from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, JiWhan Jeong (Master’s course) from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Ph.D. candidate Bo-Yoon Zang from the Graduate School of Culture Technology. They teamed up with French students from diverse backgrounds, including Design/Science, Visual Design, Geography, Computer Science and Humanities and Social Science.
This workshop will serve as another opportunity to expand academic and human exchange efforts in the domain of smart and sustainable cities with Europe in the future as the first international cooperation activity of KAIST and the Paris La Villette Science Museum.
Professor Seong-Ju Chang who led the research group said, "We will continue to establish a cooperative relationship between KAIST and the European scientific community. This workshop is a good opportunity to demonstrate the competence of KAIST students and their scientific and technological excellence on the international stage.”
2018.08.01 View 9063 -
It's Time to 3D Sketch with Air Scaffolding
People often use their hands when describing an object, while pens are great tools for describing objects in detail. Taking this idea, a KAIST team introduced a new 3D sketching workflow, combining the strengths of hand and pen input. This technique will ease the way for ideation in three dimensions, leading to efficient product design in terms of time and cost.
For a designer's drawing to become a product in reality, one has to transform a designer's 2D drawing into a 3D shape; however, it is difficult to infer accurate 3D shapes that match the original intention from an inaccurate 2D drawing made by hand. When creating a 3D shape from a planar 2D drawing, unobtainable information is required. On the other hand, loss of depth information occurs when a 3D shape is expressed as a 2D drawing using perspective drawing techniques.
To fill in these “missing links” during the conversion, "3D sketching" techniques have been actively studied. Their main purpose is to help designers naturally provide missing 3D shape information in a 2D drawing. For example, if a designer draws two symmetric curves from a single point of view or draws the same curves from different points of view, the geometric clues that are left in this process are collected and mathematically interpreted to define the proper 3D curve. As a result, designers can use 3D sketching to directly draw a 3D shape as if using pen and paper.
Among 3D sketching tools, sketching with hand motions, in VR environments in particular, has drawn attention because it is easy and quick. But the biggest limitation is that they cannot articulate the design solely using rough hand motions, hence they are difficult to be applied to product designs. Moreover, users may feel tired after raising their hands in the air during the entire drawing process.
Using hand motions but to elaborate designs, Professor Seok-Hyung Bae and his team from the Department of Industrial Design integrated hand motions and pen-based sketching, allocating roles according to their strengths. This new technique is called Agile 3D Sketching with Air Scaffolding. Designers use their hand motions in the air to create rough 3D shapes which will be used as scaffolds, and then they can add details with pen-based 3D sketching on a tablet (Figure 1).
Figure 1. In the agile 3D sketching workflow with air scaffolding, the user (a) makes unconstrained hand movements in the air to quickly generate rough shapes to be used as scaffolds, (b) uses the scaffolds as references and draws finer details with them, (c) produces a high-fidelity 3D concept sketch of a steering wheel in an iterative and progressive manner.
The team came up with an algorithm to identify descriptive hand motions from transitory hand motions and extract only the intended shapes from unconstrained hand motions, based on air scaffolds from the identified motions.
Through user tests, the team identified that this technique is easy to learn and use, and demonstrates good applicability. Most importantly, the users can reduce time, yet enhance the accuracy of defining the proportion and scale of products.
Eventually, this tool will be able to be applied to various fields including the automobile industry, home appliances, animations and the movie making industry, and robotics. It also can be linked to smart production technology, such as 3D printing, to make manufacturing process faster and more flexible.
PhD candidate Yongkwan Kim, who led the research project, said, “I believe the system will enhance product quality and work efficiency because designers can express their 3D ideas quickly yet accurately without using complex 3D CAD modeling software. I will make it into a product that every designer wants to use in various fields.”
“There have been many attempts to encourage creative activities in various fields by using advanced computer technology. Based on in-depth understanding of designers, we will take the lead in innovating the design process by applying cutting-edge technology,” Professor Bae added.
Professor Bae and his team from the Department of Industrial Design has been delving into developing better 3D sketching tools. They started with a 3D curve sketching system for professional designers called ILoveSketch and moved on to SketchingWithHands for designing a handheld product with first-person hand postures captured by a hand-tracking sensor. They then took their project to the next level and introduced Agile 3D Sketching with Air Scaffolding, a new 3D sketching workflow combining hand motion and pen drawing which was chosen as one of the CHI (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) 2018 Best Papers by the Association for Computing Machinery.
- Click the link to watch video clip of SketchingWithHands
2018.07.25 View 8792 -
Distinguished Professor Lee Receives 2018 George Washington Carver Award
(Distinguished Professor Lee)
Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering will become the 11th recipient of the George Washington Carver Award. The award ceremony will be held during the 2018 Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology from July 16 through 19 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
The annual Carver award recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to building the bio-based economy by applying industrial biotechnology to create environmentally sustainable products. It serves as a lasting memorial to the original vision of George Washington Carver who, over a century ago, pioneered bio-based products, materials, and energy derived from renewable agricultural feedstock. Previous recipients include the founder and CEO of POET Jeff Broin, the CEO of DuPont Ellen Kullman, and Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos at MIT.
Professor Lee is a pioneering scholar of systems metabolic engineering, leveraging technology to develop microbial bioprocesses for the sustainable and environment-friendly production of chemicals, fuels, and materials from non-food renewable biomass. He also serves as the dean of the multi-and interdisciplinary research center hub, KAIST Institute.Through his work, Professor Lee has garnered countless achievements, including being one of only 13 people in the world elected as a foreign member of both the National Academy of Sciences USA and the National Academy of Engineering USA.
He has actively promoted the importance of industrial biotechnology through engagement with the public, policymakers, and decision makers around the world. He currently serves as the co-chairman of the Global Future Council on Biotechnology for the World Economic Forum and served as the Chairman of the Emerging Technologies Council and Biotechnology Council for the World Economic Forum.
Upon the award announcement, Dr. Brent Erickson, executive vice president of BIO’s Industrial & Environmental Section lauded Professor Lee’s achievement, saying “Dr. Lee has advanced the bio-based economy by developing innovative products and processes that are sustainable and environmentally friendly. In doing so, he has become a leader in advocating on the importance of industrial biotechnology. His contributions to the advancement of the industry are a continuation of the legacy left behind by George Washington Carver.”
Professor Lee thanked his research team who has worked together for the past few decades, adding, “Industrial biotechnology is becoming increasingly important to help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We should continue to work together to advance the field and establish a solid foundation for the sustainable future.”
The George Washington Carver Award is sponsored by the Iowa Biotechnology Association. Joe Hrdlicka, executive director of the Iowa Biotechnology Association, said, “Dr. Sang Yup Lee’s significant contributions to the advancement of industrial biotechnology make him the perfect recipient for the George Washington Carver Award. Having published more than 575 peer-reviewed papers, contributed to 82 books, and holding 636 patents, the culmination of Dr. Lee’s work has led to the establishment of sustainable systems for bio-based production of chemicals, fuels, and materials, thus reducing environmental impact and improving quality of life for all.”
2018.07.12 View 9689 -
Professor Suh Chosen for IT Young Engineer Award
(The ceremony photo of Professor Changho Suh)
Professor Changho Suh from the School of Electrical Engineering received the IT Young Engineer Award on June 28. This award is hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institute of Electrical and Information Engineers (IEIE) and funded by the Haedong Science Foundation.
The IT Young Engineer Award is given to researchers under the age of 40 in Korea. The selection criteria include the researches’ technical practicability, their social and environmental contributions, and their creativity.
Professor Suh has shown outstanding academic performance in the field of telecommunications, distributed storage, and artificial intelligence and he has also contributed to technological commercialization. He published 23 papers in SCI journals and ten papers at top-level international conferences including the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems and the International Conference on Machine Learning. His papers were cited more than 4,100 times. He has also achieved 30 international patent registrations.
Currently, he is developing an autonomous driving system using an AI-tutor and deep learning technology.
Professor Suh said, “It is my great honor to receive the IT Young Engineer Award. I strive to continue guiding students and carrying out research in order to make a contribution to the fields of IT and AI.”
2018.07.04 View 8057 -
KAIST Team Reaching Out with Appropriate Technology
(The gold prize winning team of KATT)
The KAIST Appropriate Technology Team (KATT) consisting of international students at KAIST won the gold and silver prizes at ‘The 10th Creative Design Competition for the Other 90 Percent.’
More than 218 students from 50 teams nationwide participated in the competition hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT last month.
The competition was created to discover appropriate technology and sustainable design items to enhance the quality of life for those with no or few accessible technologies.
A team led by Juan Luis Gonzalez Bello, graduate student from the School of Electrical Engineering received the gold prize for presenting a prosthetic arm. Their artificial arm was highly recognized for its affordability and good manageability. The team said that it cost less than 10 US dollars to construct from materials available in underprivileged regions and was easy to assemble.
Sophomore Hutomo Calvin from the Department of Materials Science & Engineering also worked on the prosthetic arm project with freshmen Bella Godiva, Stephanie Tan, and Koptieuov Yearbola.
Alexandra Tran, senior from the School of Electrical Engineering led the silver prize winning team. Her team developed a portable weather monitor, ‘Breathe Easy’. She worked with Alisher Tortay, senior from the School of Computing, Ashar Alam, senior from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bereket Eshete, junior from the School of Computing, and Marthens Hakzimana, sophomore from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
This weather monitor is a low-cost but efficient air quality monitor. The team said it just cost less than seven US dollars to construct the monitor.KAIST students have now won the gold prize for two consecutive years.
2018.06.19 View 9117