Engineering
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Discovery Channel Featured "TransWall" Developed by Professor Woohun Lee
One of the most popular television programs at Discovery Channel in Canada, Daily Planet, a daily science magazine show that delivers a fascinating mix of documentaries and features, aired "TransWall” (http://vimeo.com/70391422) developed by Professor Woohun Lee of Industrial Design at KAIST.
TransWall is a two-sided touchable transparent display with a surface transducer incorporated in the display. It enables users to see, hear, or even touch people standing on the other side of the display, thereby enhancing interactive experiences when playing games or communicating.
TransWall was introduced at the 2014 ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) held in Toronto, Canada, from April 26 to May 1. The Channel learned about the technology at the conference and produced the show on April 30, 2014.
To watch the show, please visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GGP59S7T2k&list=PLXmuftxI6pTXuyjjrGFlcN5YFTKZinDhK.
2014.05.29 View 8845 -
Professor Kyu-Young Whang receives the PAKDD Distinguished Contributions Award
Professor Kyu-Young Whag
Dr. Kyu-Young Whang, Distinguished Professor from the Department of Computer Science, KAIST, has received the 2014 Distinguished Contributions Award from the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD). PAKDD is the leading academic international conference on data mining held in Asia/Pacific. This year’s international conference was held from 13th to 15th May at Tainan, Taiwan.
As a life member of the PAKDD Steering Committee, Professor Whang worked for the development of the data mining field in the Asia-Pacific region, and his contribution to the international database and data-mining field has been widely recognized.
The PAKDD Distinguished Contributions Award has been awarded to a total of six people until now, including Professor Whang, and he is the first Korean to receive this award.
Professor Whang has also a history of receiving the Outstanding Contributions Award in 2011 from the Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA), the prestigious database academic conference in the Asia-Pacific region. The database and data mining field in the region was barren 20 years ago, but through the efforts and contributions of many researchers, including Professor Whang, it has now leapt to the level of being the equal of North American and European researchers.
In fact, three academic organizations in the current international database field are led by professors in the Asia-Pacific region. The IEEE ICDE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Technical Committee on Data Engineering) is led by Professor Whang; the VLDB (Very Large Data Base) Endowment by Professor Beng Chin Ooi from National University of Singapore (NUS); and the ACM SIGMOD (Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Management of Data) by Professor Don Kossmann from ETH Zurich.
2014.05.26 View 8048 -
KAIST-Coursera Course: Introduction to Acoustics Engineering
Professor Yang-Hann Kim of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST has been offering an online course entitled “Introduction to Acoustics” on Corsera, the world’s largest MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) provider, from May 12th.
KAIST offered three Coursera classes during a spring semester in 2014, and Professor Kim’s course was the first one provided by the university to global learners.
Professor Kim has immersed himself in research and education on acoustics engineering for the past 30 years. His Coursera class has received positive responses from students, and some important data follows below:
For the past ten days, over 6,000 students from all around the world have enrolled the class. The student population consists of 33% in North America (United States and Canada), 32% in Europe, 23% in Asia, 8% in South America, and 2% in Africa. Arranged in order of countries, 25% of access originated from the United States, 8% from India, and 3% or 4% each from Brazil, Britain, Spain, Canada, Germany, Mexico, China, Russia, and France, and 2% from Korea.
The other two KAIST-Coursera classes are “Supply Chain Management: A Learning Perspective” and “Introduction to Light, Color, and Life.” For more information, please visit https://www.coursera.org/kaist.
2014.05.25 View 8945 -
KAIST Conducts Safety Awareness Campaign for Research and Experiment
KAIST had an opening ceremony to hold its first “Safety Awareness Campaign for Research and Experiment” on 13th May. Over 100 people attended the ceremony, including President Steve Kang, Provost Gyu-Ho Park, and the Dean of the Administration Office Jae-Nam Lee, as well as the Chief of the Department of Research Environment Safety from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea.
On the day of the event, Year 2014 was proclaimed as the first year of accident-free KAIST research and laboratory facilities.
A certificate of merit was awarded to promote safe and comfortable research environments. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, KAIST, was selected as the department with the best lab safety management and the Department of Mechanical Engineering as the second.
Along with the merit award ceremony, the results of the “7th Research and Laboratory Safety Campaign Contest” were announced: “Lady First When Dating, Safety First When Experimenting!” written by Jong-Su Bae from the Department of Mechanical Engineering was selected as the best slogan, and Hyeon-Chae Noh from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering received the award for best poster.
President Steve Kang said, “KAIST is constantly striving to establish a comprehensive safety management system and to promote a safe research and laboratory environment,” and “To ensure the safety of KAIST and its members, we will be as supportive as possible.”
Below is the winner of the poster from the 7th Research and Laboratory Safety Campaign Contest.
What Would You Rather Wear? Gloves or Bandages?
Gloves worn in laboratories are protection from hazardous materials that students and researchers may come in contact with. The poster emphasizes the importance of wearing protective gloves when conducting research or experiment.
2014.05.19 View 7568 -
Immune Evasion Mechanism of Hepatitis C Virus Revealed
Professor Ui-Cheol Shin
Inhibiting major histocompatibility complex [MHC] class I protein expression, T cell immune response is evaded.
The research will be a great help to the development of C hepatitis vaccine.
Roughly 1-2% of the population in Korea is known to be infected with Hepatitis C. Most Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infections progress to a chronic disease and can cause liver cirrhosis or liver cancer, which may lead to death.
Unlike Hepatitis type A or B, there is no vaccine for Hepatitis C Virus and therefore avoiding exposure to the virus is the best known method of prevention. However, a team of researchers at KAIST has produced research results, which may contribute significantly to the vaccine development.
KAIST Graduate School of Medical Sciences & Engineering’ Professor Ui-Cheol Shin and his team have successfully identified why Hepatitis C Virus does not cause an immune response within the human body. The research results were published in the May edition of The Journal of Gastroenterology, a world-renowned journal in the field of gastroenterology.
The immune response occurs to eliminate the virus that has invaded our body. During this process, a major histocompatibility complex [MHC] class I plays a key role in inducing T cell response, which is needed for the elimination of virus-infected cells.
When a cell is infected by a virus, a substance called interferon causes the increased expression of major histocompatibility complex class I. T cell recognizes the increased MHC class I and therefore finds the virus-infected cells.
However, the effect that Hepatitis C Virus has on major histocompatibility complex class I has not been clearly identified until now.
The research team has revealed, using a cell culture for infection systems, that the Hepatitis C Virus suppresses the expression of major histocompatibility complex class I. Also, the mechanism to prove that HCV activates a protein called PKR within the cell to inhibit MHC class I protein expression was identified at a molecular level.
In this study, researchers established the hypothesis that regulating PKR protein in the cell can enhance the T cell immune response, which was then proved through experiments.
Professor Ui-Cheol Shin said, “There are a lot of new drugs to treat Hepatitis C Virus, while its vaccine has not been developed yet. Revealing the HCV immune evasion mechanism will help stimulate momentum for the HCV vaccine development.”
The first author of the journal, Dr. Won-Seok Kang is a graduate from Yonsei College of Medicine. After earning his medical degree, he has continued his training as a ‘doctor-scientist’ at KAIST Graduate School of Medical Sciences & Engineering to study Hepatitis C Virus immune evasion mechanism in this research.
Hepatitis C Virus activates PKR-eIF2a pathway, which inhibits the major histocompatibility complex class I, and therefore weakens the T cell activation to the viral activity.
2014.05.19 View 10446 -
KAIST Made Great Improvements of Nanogenerator Power Efficiency
The energy efficiency of a piezoelectric nanogenerator developed by KAIST has increased by almost 40 times, one step closer toward the commercialization of flexible energy harvesters that can supply power infinitely to wearable, implantable electronic devices.
NANOGENERATORS are innovative self-powered energy harvesters that convert kinetic energy created from vibrational and mechanical sources into electrical power, removing the need of external circuits or batteries for electronic devices. This innovation is vital in realizing sustainable energy generation in isolated, inaccessible, or indoor environments and even in the human body.
Nanogenerators, a flexible and lightweight energy harvester on a plastic substrate, can scavenge energy from the extremely tiny movements of natural resources and human body such as wind, water flow, heartbeats, and diaphragm and respiration activities to generate electrical signals. The generators are not only self-powered, flexible devices but also can provide permanent power sources to implantable biomedical devices, including cardiac pacemakers and deep brain stimulators.
However, poor energy efficiency and a complex fabrication process have posed challenges to the commercialization of nanogenerators. Keon Jae Lee, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, and his colleagues have recently proposed a solution by developing a robust technique to transfer a high-quality piezoelectric thin film from bulk sapphire substrates to plastic substrates using laser lift-off (LLO).
Applying the inorganic-based laser lift-off (LLO) process, the research team produced a large-area PZT thin film nanogenerators on flexible substrates (2cm x 2cm).
“We were able to convert a high-output performance of ~250 V from the slight mechanical deformation of a single thin plastic substrate. Such output power is just enough to turn on 100 LED lights,” Keon Jae Lee explained.
The self-powered nanogenerators can also work with finger and foot motions. For example, under the irregular and slight bending motions of a human finger, the measured current signals had a high electric power of ~8.7 μA. In addition, the piezoelectric nanogenerator has world-record power conversion efficiency, almost 40 times higher than previously reported similar research results, solving the drawbacks related to the fabrication complexity and low energy efficiency.
Lee further commented,
“Building on this concept, it is highly expected that tiny mechanical motions, including human body movements of muscle contraction and relaxation, can be readily converted into electrical energy and, furthermore, acted as eternal power sources.”
The research team is currently studying a method to build three-dimensional stacking of flexible piezoelectric thin films to enhance output power, as well as conducting a clinical experiment with a flexible nanogenerator.
This research result, entitled “Highly-efficient, Flexible Piezoelectric PZT Thin Film Nanogenerator on Plastic Substrates,” was published as the cover article of the April issue of Advanced Materials. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201305659/abstract)
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Fny7Xb9ig
Over 100 LEDs operated by self-powered flexible piezoelectric thin film nanogenerator
Flexible PZT thin film nanogenerator using inorganic-based laser lift-off process
Photograph of large-area PZT thin film nanogenerator (3.5cm × 3.5cm) on a curved glass tube and 105 commercial LEDs operated by self-powered flexible piezoelectric energy harvester
2014.05.19 View 13582 -
KAIST Offers Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to Global Learners
Global learners can now take premier engineering courses offered by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) through one of the leading online education providers, Coursera.
KAIST has begun offering three massive open online courses (MOOCs) to reach millions of students on the Internet. Collaborating with Coursera to provide a MOOC platform, KAIST will extend its excellence in science and engineering to a broader global audience while using technology to enhance the classroom experience for its students on campus.
Three courses are offered in the following areas: sound engineering (as of May 12th); an interdisciplinary approach of physics, life science, and industrial design (to be launched in late May); and business management (to be launched in June).
Professor Yang-Hann Kim of Mechanical Engineering, an instructor who will teach the “Introduction to Acoustics” course, explained his decision to participate in MOOCs:
“I have been teaching acoustics engineering at KAIST over the past 30 years. I wanted to share my knowledge and expertise with researchers and students who are otherwise unable to receive a quality education in a traditional education setting. This is a great opportunity to offer my talent to the global community.”
The Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching at KAIST has worked with professors to design online courses, record video lectures, and create student assignments. Students will learn in 10- to 15-minute lesson segments over a ten-week period, with an anticipated workload of 4-6 hours per week, on average.
KAIST made a partnership agreement with Coursera in October 2013 to provide free online courses for Korean and global learners. Beginning with three courses, the university plans to increase the number of classes incrementally.
To get more information about KAIST’s MOOC offerings, please visit https://www.coursera.org/kaist.
Founded by two computer science professors at Stanford University in 2012, Coursera offers free online education to anyone interested in learning and equipped with the Internet, including students, professionals, and life-long learners, to empower them with knowledge and skills. As of April 2014, Coursera has 7.1 million users in 641 courses from 108 institutions.
2014.05.14 View 9436 -
Clear Display Technology Under Sunlight Developed
The late Professor Seung-Man Yang
The last paper of the late Professor Seung-Man Yang, who was a past master of colloids and fluid mechanics
Practical patterning technology of the next generation optical materials, photonic crystals
The mineral opal does not possess any pigments, but it appears colorful to our eyes. This is because only a particular wavelength is reflected due to the regular nano-structure of its surface. The material that causes selective reflection of the light is called photonic crystals.
The deceased Professor Seung-Man Yang and his research team from KAIST’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department ha ve developed micro-pattern technology using photolithographic process. This can accelerate the commercialization of photonic crystals, which is hailed as the next generation optics material.
The research results were published in the April 16th edition of Advanced Materials, known as the most prestigious world-renowned journal in the field of materials science.
The newly developed photonic crystal micro-pattern could be used as a core material for the next generation reflective display that is clearly visible even under sunlight. Since it does not require a separate light source, a single charge is enough to last for several days.
Until now, many scientists have endeavored to make photonic crystals artificially, however, most were produced in a lump and therefore lacked efficiency. Also, the low mechanical stability of the formed structure prevented from commercialization.
In order to solve these problems, the research team has copied the nano-structure of opals.
Glass beads were arranged in the same nano-structure as the opal on top of the photoresist material undergoing photocuring by ultraviolet light. The glass beads were installed in the photoresist materials, and UV light was selectively exposed on micro regions. The remaining region was developed by photolithographic process to successfully produce photonic crystals in micro-patterns.
The co-author of the research, KAIST Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department’s Professor Sin-Hyeon Kim, said, “Combining the semiconductor process technology with photonic crystal pattern technology can secure the practical applications for photonic crystals.”He also predicted “This technology can be used as the key optical material that configures the next generation reflective color display device with very low power consumption.”
The late Professor Seung-Man Yang was a world-renowned expert in the field of colloids and fluid mechanics. Professor Yang published over 193 papers in international journals and continued his research until his passing in last September.
He received Du Pont Science and Technology Award in 2007, KAIST Person of the Year 2008, Gyeong-Am Academy Award in 2009, as well as the President’s Award of the Republic of Korea in March 2014. The researchers devoted the achievement of this year’s research to Professor Yang in his honor.
Research was conducted by KAIST Photonic-fluidic Integrated Devices Research Team, as a part of the Creative Research Program funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea.
Figure 1. Opal [left] and the nano glass bead arrangement structure within the opal [right]
Figure 2. Process chart of the photonic crystal micro-pattern formation based on photolithography
Figure 3. Opal structure [left] and inverted structure of the opal [right]
Figure 4. Photonic crystal micro-pattern in solid colors
Figure 5. Photonic crystal micro-pattern that reflects two different crystals (Red, Green) [left] and pixelated pattern of photonic crystal in three primary colors (Red, Green, Blue) [right] that is applicable to reflective displays
2014.05.14 View 11346 -
Yong-Joon Park, doctoral student, receives the Korea Dow Chemical Award 2014
Yong-Joon Park, a Ph.D. candidate of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, received the Korea Dow Chemical Award 2014, a prestigious recognition of the year’s best paper produced by students in the field of chemistry and materials science.
The award ceremony took place on April 18, 2014 at Ilsan Kintex, Republic of Korea.
The Korea Dow Chemical Award is annually given by Korea Dow Chemical and the Korean Chemical Society to outstanding papers produced by graduate and postdoc students. This year, a total of nine papers were selected out of 148 papers submitted.
The title of Park’s paper is “The Development of 3D Nano-structure-based New Concept Super-elastic Materials.” This material could be used in flexible electronic devices such as displays and wearable computers.
2014.05.03 View 8094 -
Leon Chua, the founder of the circuit theory called "memristor," gave a talk at KAIST
Dr. Leon Ong Chua is a circuit theorist and professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He visited KAIST on April 16, 2014 and gave a talk entitled “Memristor: New Device with Intelligence.”
Dr. Chua contributed to the development of nonlinear circuit theory and cellular neural networks (CNN). He was also the first to conceive of memristor which combines the characteristics of memory and resistor. Memristor is a type of resistor, remembering the direction and charge of electrical current that has previously flowed through the resistor. In other words, memristor can retain memory without power. Today, memristor is regarded as the fourth fundamental circuit element, together with capacitors, inductors, and resistors.
In 2008, researchers at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs developed the first working model of memristor, which was reported in Nature (May 1st , 2008).
In addition, Dr. Chua is an IEEE fellow and has received numerous awards including the IEEE Kirchhoff Award, the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and the Top 15 Most Cited Author in Engineering Award.
2014.04.21 View 9276 -
Thermoelectric generator on glass fabric for wearable electronic devices
Wearable computers or devices have been hailed as the next generation of mobile electronic gadgets, from smart watches to smart glasses to smart pacemakers. For electronics to be worn by a user, they must be light, flexible, and equipped with a power source, which could be a portable, long-lasting battery or no battery at all but a generator. How to supply power in a stable and reliable manner is one of the most critical issues to commercialize wearable devices.
A team of KAIST researchers headed by Byung Jin Cho, a professor of electrical engineering, proposed a solution to this problem by developing a glass fabric-based thermoelectric (TE) generator that is extremely light and flexible and produces electricity from the heat of the human body. In fact, it is so flexible that the allowable bending radius of the generator is as low as 20 mm. There are no changes in performance even if the generator bends upward and downward for up to 120 cycles.
To date, two types of TE generators have been developed based either on organic or inorganic materials. The organic-based TE generators use polymers that are highly flexible and compatible with human skin, ideal for wearable electronics. The polymers, however, have a low power output. Inorganic-based TE generators produce a high electrical energy, but they are heavy, rigid, and bulky.
Professor Cho came up with a new concept and design technique to build a flexible TE generator that minimizes thermal energy loss but maximizes power output. His team synthesized liquid-like pastes of n-type (Bi2Te3) and p-type (Sb2Te3) TE materials and printed them onto a glass fabric by applying a screen printing technique. The pastes permeated through the meshes of the fabric and formed films of TE materials in a range of thickness of several hundreds of microns. As a result, hundreds of TE material dots (in combination of n and p types) were printed and well arranged on a specific area of the glass fabric.
Professor Cho explained that his TE generator has a self-sustaining structure, eliminating thick external substrates (usually made of ceramic or alumina) that hold inorganic TE materials. These substrates have taken away a great portion of thermal energy, a serious setback which causes low output power.
He also commented,
"For our case, the glass fabric itself serves as the upper and lower substrates of a TE generator, keeping the inorganic TE materials in between. This is quite a revolutionary approach to design a generator. In so doing, we were able to significantly reduce the weight of our generator (~0.13g/cm2), which is an essential element for wearable electronics."
When using KAIST's TE generator (with a size of 10 cm x 10 cm) for a wearable wristband device, it will produce around 40 mW electric power based on the temperature difference of 31 °F between human skin and the surrounding air.
Professor Cho further described about the merits of the new generator:
"Our technology presents an easy and simple way of fabricating an extremely flexible, light, and high-performance TE generator. We expect that this technology will find further applications in scale-up systems such as automobiles, factories, aircrafts, and vessels where we see abundant thermal energy being wasted."
This research result was published online in the March 14th issue of Energy & Environmental Science and was entitled "Wearable Thermoelectric Generator Fabricated on Glass Fabric."
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlN9lvEzCuw&feature=youtu.be
[Picture Captions]
Caption 1: The picture shows a high-performance wearable thermoelectric generator that is extremely flexible and light.
Caption 2: A thermoelectric generator developed as a wristband. The generator can be easily curved along with the shape of human body.
Caption 3: KAIST’s thermoelectric generator can be bent as many as 120 times, but it still shows the same high performance.
2014.04.21 View 19816 -
Hidden Mechanism for the Suppression of Colon Cancer Identified
Published in Cell Reports : cells at the risk of causing colorectal cancer due to genetic mutation are discharged outside the colon tissue
Korean researchers have successfully identified the cancer inhibitory mechanism of the colon tissue. The discovery of the inherent defense mechanism of the colon tissues is expected to provide understanding of the cause of colorectal cancer.
The research was led by Kwang-Hyun Cho, a professor of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST (corresponding author) and participated by Dr. Jehun Song (the first author), as well as Dr. Owen Sansom, David Huels, and Rachel Ridgway from the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in the UK and Dr. Walter Kolch from Conway Institute in Ireland.
The research was funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the National Research Foundation of Korea, and its results were published in the 28th March online edition of Cell Reports under the title of “The APC network regulates the removal of mutated cells from colonic crypts.”
The organism can repair damaged tissues by itself, but genetic mutations, which may cause cancer, can occur in the process of cell division s for the repair. The rapid cell division s and toxic substances from the digestive process cause a problem especially in colon crypt that has a high probability for genetic mutation.
The research team was able to find out that the colon tissues prevent cancer by rapidly discharging carcinogenic cells with genetic mutations from the colon crypt durin ga frequent tissue repair process.
This defense mechanism, which inhibits abnormal cell division s by reducing the time mutated cells reside in the crypt, is inherent in the colon.
Extensive mathematical simulation results show that the mutated cells with enhanced Wnt signaling acquire increased adhesion in comparison to the normal cells, which therefore move rapidly toward the upper part of the crypt and are discharged more easily.
If beta-catenine, the key factor in Wnt signal transduction pathway, is not degraded due to genetic mutation, the accumulated beta-catenine activates cell proliferation and increases cell adhesion. The special environment of crypt tissue and the tendency of the cells with similar adhesion to aggregate will therefore discharge the mutated cell, hence maintaining the tissue homeostasis.
In vivo experiment with a mouse model confirms the simulation results that, in the case of abnormal crypt, the cells with high proliferation in fact move slower.
Professor Cho said, “This research has identified that multicellular organism is exquisitely designed to maintain the tissue homeostasis despite abnormal cell mutation. This also proves the systems biology research, which is a convergence of information technology and bio-technology , can discover hidden mechanisms behind complex biological phenomena.”
Crypt: Epithelium, consisting of approximately 2,000 cells, forms a colon surface in the shape of a cave.
Wnt Signaling: A signal transduction pathway involved in the proliferation and differentiation of cells that are particularly important for the embryonic development and management of adult tissue homeostasis.
2014.04.17 View 11219