CHI
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Texas Instruments, Inc. Agreed for Collaborative Research with Professor Hai-Joon Yoo, the Electrical Engineering Department of KAIST
Professor Hai-Joon Yoo from the Electrical Engineering Department of KAIST made a research collaboration agreement with Texas Instruments (TI), Inc. in July 2010 to develop a “Many-core Processor Chip,” a chip that is designed to emulate a human brain.
TI, Inc. is an American company based in Dallas, Texas and renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. The company is the 4th largest manufacturer of semiconductors worldwide, 2nd supplier of chips for cellular handsets, and 1st producer of digital signal processors and analog semiconductors, among a wide range of semiconductor products.
TI, Inc. has designated Professor Yoo’s lab as one of its official labs and promised to give financial supports for the lab—it has pledged to donate a total value of 300 million won of research fund and equipment to Professor Yoo. On July 21, 2010, the signboard hanging ceremony for the designation of a TI Lab was held at Professor Yoo’s lab.
Professor Yoo developed a neuro-circuit network to emulate a human brain by adopting a mixed mode circuit that has chips for analog and digital circuits. He then has conducted a research to graft the mixed mode circuit onto a Many-core Processor to integrate the human intelligence into a conventional single-core processor that can process one instruction at a time. The Many-core Processor, once developed, can be applied to various kinds of products such as an artificial intelligence surveillance camera, robot, smart car, and the like.
Professor Yoo has presented his research results at numerous international meetings and conferences, among other things, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), a global forum sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The Conference offers a unique opportunity for engineers working at the cutting edge of IC design to maintain technical currency, and to network with leading experts.
Professor Yoo is a senior member of IEEE and Chairman of ISSCC in Asia.
2010.08.05 View 11380 -
"The 2010 Artificial Intelligence Robot War Competition" begins to receive applications
[Event Notice]
“The 2010 Artificial Intelligence Robot War Competition” begins to receive applications
A good opportunity to gauge the intelligence of your robots
“The 2010 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Robot War Competition” will be held in October 2010, and the Competition has been receiving applications from contestants since April 1st. The deadline for the application will be May 31st, 2010.
Qualified contestants must be a minimum of two, but less than six, team members, and they will compete in one of the two fields: System on Chip (SoC) Taekwon Robot and Humanoid Robot (HURO). Winners will be decided based on the intelligence capabilities presented by a robot’s platform that mimics key functions of the human brain.
SoC Taekwon Robot will compete against one another by using a camera installed on its head to recognize visual images, locations, distances, and gestures of the other competing robot.
HURO competition is a new entry begun this year, and winners will be determined in accordance with the robot’s ability to perform given missions and fights. Missions are to go through a track installed with obstacles, recognize colors and shapes of barriers, and knock down barriers to earn scores. Fighting will be performed in the form of a Korean martial art, Tae-kwon-do.
The Korean government has nominated Robotics as one of the key growth engines to develop IT industry and Korean economy. Robotics converge many of different engineering fields, such as machinery, materials, components, and embedded software. In particular, the SoC is an essential technology for Korea to continuously take lead in the semi-conductor industry in the world, which is an important element for robotics.
SoC stands for System on Chip, an integrated chip that assembles various chips and components to be fabricated together on a single chip, instead of building them on a circuit board. The SoC technology has advantages of higher performance, smaller space requirements, lower memory requirements, higher system reliability, and lower consumer costs.
An artificial intelligence SoC robot is autonomous because it can adapt itself to changes in various environments and reach a given goal without constantly receiving external orders.
For details of the event, please refer to the website of www.socrobotwar.org.
2010.04.06 View 12001 -
New Text Book on Chemistry Published by KAIST Professor and Student
A chemistry textbook written in English and Korean will aid Korean students to learn General Chemistry in a global academic setting.
Korean students majoring in chemistry and looking for an opportunity to study abroad will have a new, handy textbook that presents them with a practical introduction to an English speaking lecture on general chemistry.
Aiming for advanced Korean high school and college/university students, the inter-language textbook is written by two incumbent professors teaching chemistry at a university in Korea and the US. The book will help Korean students prepare for a classroom where various topics of general chemistry are presented and discussed in English. Clear, collated sections of English and Korean text provide the student with sufficient explanation of the rudimentary topics and concepts.
Composed of 15 chapters on the core subjects of General Chemistry, i.e., Stoichiometry and Chemical Reactions, Thermochemistry, Atomic Structure, and Bonding, the textbook includes essential English vocabulary and usage sections for each chapter; it also contains a pre-reading study guide on the subject that prepares the student for listening to a lecture. This section includes view-graph type slides, audio files, and follow-up questions the student can use to prepare for an English-speaking course. The various accompanying audio files are prepared to expose the student to English scientific dialogue and serve as examples for instruction at Korean secondary and tertiary schools.
The book was coauthored by Korean and American scientists: A father and son, who have taught chemistry at an American and Korean university, wrote the book. Professor Melvyn R. Churchill at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Professor David G. Churchill at KAIST prepared all of the technical English text which was adapted from General Chemistry course lecture notes; the text was further shaped by original perspectives arising from many student interactions and questions.
This English text was translated into Korean by Professor Kwanhee Lee from the Department of Life and Food Science at Handong Global University, who coauthored a previous preparatory book for Korean students in a different subject. He also supplied an important introductory section which serves as a general guide to the classroom student. Kibong Kim, a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry at KAIST, helped in preparing the book as well.
“This has been definitely a collaborative undertaking with an international academic crew and it underscores that the Korean internationalization in science is mainstream. Professors and a Korean student created a new book for Korean consumption and benefit,” Professor David G. Churchill says.
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Bibliography: “How to Prepare for General Chemistry Taught in English” by David George Churchill, Melvyn Rowen Churchill, Kwanhee Lee & Kibong Kim, Darakwon Publishing, Paju, Republic of Korea, 2010, 400 pp, ISBN 978-89-5995-730-9 (1 Audio CD included)
2010.04.02 View 13513
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Board Chairman Chung Makes First Visit to Building Named After Him
Moon-Soul Chung, chairman of the KAIST board of trustees, visited the building built with his donation on Monday (Oct. 19) for the first time since he made the deed of gift eight years ago, university authorities said on Monday (Oct. 19).
In 2000, Chung, founder and former CEO of Mirae Corp, manufacturer of semiconductor testing equipment, announced retirement and handed over the presidency of his company to one of his managing directors. One year later in 2001, he donated 30 billion won, then equivalent to $30 million, to KAIST. It was by then the largest amount given by a single donor.
The major part of his donation went to constructing a building for the newly-established Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, and it was named after him. However, Chung did not attend the ground-breaking and dedication ceremonies, saying that he would not enter the building until KAIST achieved a breakthrough technology which can inject a hope to Koreans.
On his first visit to the building, he was briefed on the major research outcomes of the department over the past seven years, which were highlighted by the recent invention of an apparatus for measuring perfusion rate of legs. A KAIST team headed by Prof. Chul-Hee Choi invented a light leakage prevention unit including a light emitting device for radiating light having a certain wavelength onto a living body injected with Indocyanine Green (ICG).
According to Prof. Choi, the invention relates to an apparatus for measuring the perfusion rate of legs. The invention also includes a light leakage prevention housing formed to prevent transmission of external light.
Chung expressing satisfaction with the achievements and encouraged professors, researchers and students working at the Moon-Soul Chung Building.
2009.10.20 View 12865 -
Prof. Cho Elected Editor-in-Chief of Systems Biology
Prof. Kwang-Hyun Cho of Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST has been recently elected editor-in-chief of the Systems Biology, an international journal published by the London-based Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the university authorities said on Wednesday (Sept. 23)
By the year 2012, Cho will oversee the editorial process of the journal covering intra- and inter-cellular dynamics, using systems- and signal-oriented approaches. IET, one of the world"s leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community, has a worldwide membership of more than 150,000.
Prof. Cho"s research interests cover the areas of systems science with bio-medical applications including systems biology and bio-inspired engineering based on molecular systems biology. He is currently an editorial board member of Systems and Synthetic Biology (Springer, Netherlands, from 2006), BMC Systems Biology (BMC, London, U.K., from 2007), Gene Regulation and Systems Biology (Libertas Academica, New Zealand, from 2007), and Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (Springer, New York, from 2008), and an editorial advisory board member of Molecular BioSystems (The Royal Society of Chemistry, U.K.).
2009.09.24 View 14682 -
KAIST Professor Whang Turns VLDB Journal Into One of the Best in Its Field
Kyu-Young Whang, a Distinguished Professor at KAIST’s Computer Science Department, has developed The VLDB Journal into one of the world’s best journals on database technology.
Professor Whang, Editor-in-Chief of The VLDB Journal, is credited for the journal’s remarkable success evidenced by the rise of the publication’s Science Citation Index (SCI) impact factor from 3.818 to 6.8 in the period of one year. This placed the VLDB in the first place amongst 99 information systems journals and 44 hardware and architecture-related journals registered with the SCI. With only the exception of the Survey Journal, this makes The VLDB Journal the best in computer science.
The VLDB Journal is a quarterly journal published on behalf of the VLDB Endowment. The journal, launched in 1992, is dedicated to the publication of scholarly contributions to the advancement of information system architectures, the impact of technological advancements on information systems, and the development of novel database applications.
The VLDB Journal’s closest competitors in database technology, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering and ACM Transactions on Database Systems, received an impact factor of 2.236 and 1.613 respectively. Comparatively, Professor Whang’s journal retains an impact factor nearly 3 to 4 times greater.
During Professor Whang’s six-year term as Editor-in-Chief, he has actively pursued the use of innovative ideas, strengthened the board of editors, standardized the length of review time, and made the journal much more accessible through the Internet. Furthermore, he drastically reduced publication time and sought a policy that focused more on the journal’s readers, which led to The VLDB Journal’s SCI impact factor rising from 1.149 (2002) to 6.8 (2008).
As one of The VLDB Journal’s founding members, Professor Whang has worked for the advancement of his journal tirelessly for 19 years with many accomplishments in database technology, including physical database design, determining the quality of a database, and the creation of a database management system. As a result, Professor Whang became the first IEEE fellow concerning domestic computer science. He is also a trustee of The VLDB Endowment, a fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, and of course, a Distinguished Professor at KAIST.
2009.07.16 View 13137 -
Prof. Cho Appointed Editor-in-Chief of Systems Biology Encyclopedia
Prof. Kwang-Hyun Cho of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, KAIST, has been appointed as the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Systems Biology which is currently in development by Springer, a New York-based publishing company, university authorities said on Monday (July 6).
Prof. Cho will share the position with three other eminent scholars from Britain, Germany and the United States. Cho will be responsible for selecting editorial members for each section of the Encyclopedia and overseeing the overall editorial process.
The Encyclopedia of Systems Biology is a multi-volume reference compilation of the research outcomes in the field of systems biology all over the world. The ESB will consist of alphabetically ordered description of systems biology concepts and is envisaged to ultimately comprise 6-12 volumes. Publication of the Encyclopedia is scheduled for 2011.
2009.07.08 View 12233 -
KAIST to hold International Workshop on Flexible Displays
The 2009 KAIST International Workshop on Flexible Displays will take place at the Electrical Engineering Building on June 25, university sources said on Tuesday (June 23).
The workshop organized by the Center for Advanced Flexible Display Convergence (CAFDC) will explore the status and future vision of flexible and transparent plasma displays, which are among the key technologies for the development of the next-generation displays. There will be also discussions about technologies to realize the large-scale flexible and transparent display which is regarded as the display of the future.
Among the speakers are some of the most prominent figures in the field. Gary Eden from University of Illinois, Prof. Kunihide Tachibana from Kyoto University, and Carol Wedding, the president of Imaging Systems Tech., USA and several other well-known professors and engineers will participate in the workshop.
Professor Kyung-Cheol Choi, CAFDC chair, said: "The workshop will provide an excellent opportunity to examine the flexible and transparent plasma display technologies. It will also be a good chance to explore large-scale flexible and transparent displays from various technical viewpoints."
2009.06.24 View 16535
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KAIST Appoints Two CEOs for Promotion of Innovative Projects
KAIST has appointed chief executive officers (CEO) for the two companies KAIST has recently established to carry out two innovative "low-carbon, green growth projects" supported by the Korean government, university authorities said on Monday (June 2).
Chung-Sung Ahn, a former executive of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., a top shipbuilder of the world, was appointed as the CEO of the Mobile Harbor Co., and Chung-Koo Lee, a former president of Hyundai Motor Co., as CEO of the On-Line Electric Car Co.
The two companies have been newly established for the commercial operation of the mobile harbor and on-line electric car projects that KAIST has been working on.
KAIST has developed a plan to power electric cars through re-charging strips embedded in roadways. The university has built a prototype on its campus for electric-powered golf carts and worked on designs that would power cars and buses.
The mobile harbor system is motivated by a growing need for an innovative container transport service system to effectively meet continuing increase in global container shipping volume, KAIST has developed a system that can unload containers from a containership to a floating harbor in the sea and deliver them to a land terminal and load cargoes in a reverse way.
The 71-year-old Ahn of the Mobile Harbor Co. served as the president of the Offshore & Engineering Division and the Industrial Plant & Engineering Division of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. from 2003 to 2005. He completed Advanced Management Program (AMP) from Harvard Business School in 1990. Ahn obtained Ph.D. in ocean engineering from MIT in 1972, M.S. in naval architecture from MIT in 1969, M.S. in meteorology/oceanography from MIT in 1967 and B.S. in Maritime Science from Korea Maritime University in 1959.
Chung-Koo Lee, 64, served as president of Hyundai Motor Co. from 1992 to 2002 and as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology from 2001 to 2003.
2009.06.05 View 11263 -
Prof. Chung Appointed Chief Design Officer of Seoul City
Prof. Kyung-Won Chung of the Department of Industrial Design, KAIST, has been appointed as the new chief design officer of the Seoul Metropolitan City, university sources said on Tuesday (May 26).
Chung succeeded Prof, Young-Gull Kwon of Seoul National University who served as the inaugural head of the design division since 2007. The deputy-mayor level position has a two-year term.
With a vision to turn Seoul into a "global design hub," the Seoul city administration established the design division and initiated a slew of initiatives including design competitions aimed at improving the city"s looks.
Prof. Chung graduated from Seoul National University and its graduate school. Then, he earned a master"s degree from Syracuse University, New York, and a doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. Since February 2009, he has served as an executive of the newly-created Seoul Design Foundation. He also served as president of the Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) from February 2000 through May 2003.
2009.05.28 View 9437 -
International News Outlets Report on KAIST's On-Line Electric Vehicle Project
International news agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters have recently reported on the "online" electric vehicle project KAIST is proceeding with. A number of newspapers abroad including the New York Times and the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong published the articles. Following are excerpts from those reports.
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S. Koreans designing "online" electric vehicles
By JEAN H. LEE
Associated Press
Urban visionaries in London and Seoul, two of the world"s busiest capital cities, foresee buses gliding through their streets with speed, ease and efficiency _ without emitting the exhaust fumes that scientists say are contributing to global warming.Under Mayor Boris Johnson"s vision, London"s iconic red double-decker Routemaster buses would be back on the streets _ but powered by electricity, not gasoline.
Engineers at South Korea"s top-ranked KAIST university are meanwhile working on a novel prototype for an electric vehicle system: one that provides power on the go through induction strips laid into the roadway.
Cities _ which house 75 percent of the world"s population and generate 80 percent of its pollution _ must take leadership in tackling the problem of polluting emissions, Johnson said Monday in Seoul on the eve of the third C40 Large Cities Climate Summit.
"I think as a collective of cities, what we should be doing here in Seoul is agreeing that we are going to stop the endless addiction of mankind to the internal combustion engine," he told reporters. "It"s time that we moved away from fossil fuels. It"s time that we went for low-carbon vehicles."
"Cars form many problems that we see in Korea as well as other countries. We use hydrocarbon organic fuels, mostly petroleum, and that, in turn, creates environmental problems _ and Seoul is notorious," said Suh Nam-pyo, president of KAIST in Daejeon, south of the South Korean capital.
Seoul, population 10 million, is getting warmer three times faster than the world average, the National Meteorological Administration said Monday.
The obvious solution, Suh said, is to "replace all these vehicles with vehicles that do not pollute the air and do not use oil."
Back in March, Johnson zipped down a British highway in a U.S.-made electric car that he wrote marked "the beginning of a long-overdue revolution."
He rhapsodized in a Telegraph newspaper editorial that the Tesla has no exhaust pipe, carburetor or fuel tank, and "while every other car on that motorway was a-parping and a-puttering, filling the air with fumes and particulates, this car was producing no more noxious vapours than a dandelion in an alpine meadow."
Last month, he launched an ambitious plan to get 100,000 electric cars onto the streets of London by 2015. He pushed for the creation of 25,000 charging stations and vowed to convert some 1,000 city vehicles to make London the "electric car capital of Europe."
"The age of the diesel-emitting bus has got to be over in London," Johnson said.
And scientists are still grappling with the massive, sensitive, costly and fast-depleting batteries that take the place of international combustion engines and gasoline. Electric cars run between 40 and 120 miles (60 to 200 kilometers) on one charge, and it takes anywhere from two to seven hours to fully recharge, said Christian Mueller of the IHS Global Insight consulting firm.
"Everybody is frantically working on coming up with a viable electric car," he said from Frankfurt, Germany.
Batteries "aren"t yet at a state where we can say they are cheap, they"re reliable and they"re easy to come by. They all still have their technical drawbacks," said Mueller, who specializes in electrics and electronics.
Suh, an MIT-trained inventor with some 60 international patents to his name, approached the challenge from another angle.
"Why not have power transmitted on the ground and pick it up without using mechanical contact?" he said in an interview in his office overlooking the staging grounds for the university"s electric cars.
KAIST"s "online" vehicles pick up power from trips, or inverters, embedded into the road rather than transmitted through rails or overhead wires. A small battery, one-fifth the size of the bulky batteries typically used, would give the vehicle enough power for another 50 miles (80 kilometers), said Cho Dong-ho, the scientist in charge of the project.
South Korea produces its own nuclear power, meaning it can produce a continuous supply of energy to fuel such a plan.
President Lee Myung-bak, whose government gave KAIST $50 million for two major projects, including the "online" electric vehicle, took a spin in February.
Online buses are running at the KAIST campus and will begin test runs soon on the resort island of Jeju.
But Seoul, which has promised to set aside $2 million for the underground charging system, is within Suh"s sights. He said 9,000 gasoline-fueled buses now crisscross the capital, with 1,000 going out of commission each year. He envisions replacing those aging buses with electric models. Initial test runs are expected to take place this year.
Mueller, the consultant, called it a creative approach with potential.
"It sounds very intriguing; you don"t store your energy, you provide it on the go." he said. "The (battery) storage problem is overcome instantly. That would be a very intriguing way of doing it."
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South Korea tries recharging road to power vehicles
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea"s top technology university has developed a plan to power electric cars through recharging strips embedded in roadways that use a technology to transfer energy found in some electric toothbrushes.
The plan, still in the experimental stage, calls for placing power strips about 20 cm (8 inches) to 90 cm (35 inches) wide and perhaps several hundred meters long built into the top of roads.
Vehicles with sensor-driven magnetic devices on their underside can suck up energy as they travel over the strips without coming into direct contact.
"If we place these strips on about 10 percent of roadways in a city, we could power electric vehicles," said Cho Dong-ho, the manager of the "online electric vehicle" plan at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
The university has built a prototype at its campus in Daejeon, about 140 km (90 miles) south of Seoul, for electric-powered golf carts and is working on designs that would power cars and buses.
The system that can charge several vehicles at once would allow electric cars and buses to cut down on their battery sizes or extend their ranges.
The non-contact transfer of electricity, also called inductive charging, works by magnets and cables on the underside of the vehicle making a connection with the current in the recharging strip to receive power as they travel over it.
It is employed in some brands of electric toothbrushes that are sealed and water resistant, which do not need to be plugged into anything but use a magnetic connection to receive energy while resting in a cradle.
The recharging strips, which are attached to small electrical stations, would be laid in places such as bus lanes and the roads running up to intersections so that vehicles could power up where traffic slows down, Cho said.
The system will be tested later this year for use in the bus systems of Seoul and other South Korea cities while some of the country"s automakers are also cooperating in the project.
Unlike electric lines used for trams, vehicles do not need to be in constant contact with the strips and a person can touch the lines without receiving a shock.
The system so far has proven safe to humans and machinery, Cho said.
The cost of installing the system is an estimated 400 million won ($318,000) per kilometer of road. Electricity is extra.
2009.05.21 View 14831
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Prof. Seong Publishes English Book on Reliability in Digital Control Systems
Prof. Poong-Hyun Seong of Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering has recently published an English-language book on reliability and risk issues in large scale safety-critical digital control systems used in complex facilities such as nuclear power plants.
The book entitled “Reliability and Risk Issues in Large Scale Safety-critical Digital Control Systems” is a result of Prof. Seong’s collaboration with some KAIST graduates who used to be under his guidance. The 303-page publication has been published by Springer, one of the world’s leading publishers of academic journals, as part of the Springer Series in Reliability Engineering.
The book consists of four parts; part I deals with issues related to hardware, part II software, part III human factors and finally the last part integrated systems. It can be purchased through some on-line book stores such as Amazon.com.
Prof. Seong served as an editor-in-chief for Nuclear Engineering and Technology (NET), an international journal of Korean Nuclear Society (KNS), from 2003 to 2008. He also worked as a chair of the Human Factors Division (HFD) of American Nuclear Society (ANS) from 2006 to 2007. Prof. Seong is now a commissioner of Korea Nuclear Safety Commission which is the nation’s highest committee on Nuclear Safety.
2008.12.26 View 15051