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Seung-Han Lee, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, receives the best paper award from ISQED 2014
Seung-Han
Lee, a doctoral candidate in the department of electrical engineering at KAIST,
received a Best Paper Award from the International Symposium on Quality
Electronic Design (ISQED), a high-profile international conference started in 2000 to promote innovation and quality in electronic and
engineering designs through inter- and multidisciplinary approaches. The
award ceremony will take place at the 2014 ISQED on March 3-5, 2014 at the Convention
Center in Santa Clara, CA, USA.
Professor
Chong-Min Kyung, an advisor to Seung-Han, expressed his excitement about his student's achievement.
“This is
the first time a Korean has ever received the best paper award at this academic
conference. It’s great news to our student as well as to KAIST.”
The topic
of Lee’s research paper was dynamic cache data management for minimizing the
energy consumption of three-dimensional multi-processor semiconductor chips.
2014.03.03 View 10413 -
Festival Featuring Asia's Best Science Students to be Held
The first Electronic Olympics, which will host students from five top Asian research-centered universities, will be held in August at KAIST. Students will take part in competitive events and explore cultural diversity. Student representatives of HKUST, NTU, TITECH, Tsinghua University, and KAIST gathered on February 20 to begin planning the tentatively named “ASPIRE E-Olympics.”
The key words of this Olympics are "Harmony" and "Competition." The events will be composed of an AI programming contest, SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) picture contest, and the other technology-based contests. Cultural events, where each university’s students can interact, will also be prepared.
ASPIRE (Asian Science and Technology Pioneering Institutes of Research and Education) events have been held from 2009. Previously, the ASPIRE forum has been an exchange event for groups of vice presidents and graduate school students from the five schools to exchange achievements in education and research. This year, it has been extended to undergraduates.
Yoseop Kim, KAIST’s student body vice president, said that he wants to make a MOU with some of Asia’s best research-centered universities and develop it into something similar to the Davos Forum. His intention is to support the E-Olympics in the hope that ASPIRE will become a top university consortium.
From left, HKUST, KAIST, NTU, TITECH, Tsinghua University Logos
Student representative group photo of Top Asian Research-Centered Universities
Electronic Olympics for students from five top Asian science and engineering universities to be held in August
2014.02.27 View 8627 -
KAIST President Held One-year Anniversary Press Conference
President Steve Kang had a press conference
on February 25, 2014 at the Faculty Club on campus, commemorating the first
year of his presidency. About 30 different media representatives nationwide
attended the meeting.
At his first press conference on the anniversary of his tenure, President Kang
described what he has achieved in the past year, which were: 1) rebuilding the
campus culture to start a campaign for mutual respect, trust, and open
communication by holding meetings with the members of the KAIST community more
than 60 times, 2) establishing core values, creativity and challenge, to
enhance the fabric of the community, 3) restructuring of the university
administration, and 4) the announcement of the mid- and long-term development
plan.
He also mentioned that “2014 will be another exciting year for KAIST to make
more progress” and laid out a few major projects to be implemented this year:
launching of the “Committee for Engineering Education Innovation,” “Startup
KAIST” (an entrepreneurship program), “Greater Collaboration in Technology
Translation and Management with Seoul National University,” and “KAIST End Run”
(a global business incubation program).Explanation of 2014 Major Endeavors by President KangFor
the past decade, domestic engineering schools weighed SCI dissertation
publication more heavily in university evaluations, yielding a world-class
research level. However, such an approach resulted in placing less importance
on entrepreneurship, commercialization, or creating economic values.As a
result, engineering Professors have been evaluated as being too focused on theoretical
SCI dissertation research rather than practical research that could yield
economic benefits through commercialization of developed technology. In
addition, some have criticized that engineering universities have not educated
creative researchers demanded by the industry.KAIST
has begun responding to these criticisms and has made a few suggestions to strengthen
engineering education, promote entrepreneurship in engineers, and globalize Korean
venture companies.As
part of such efforts, KAIST established the KAIST Education and Research
Innovation Committee, composed of various individuals from the industry,
research institutes, alumni, faculty members, and others, to discuss ways to reinforce
engineering education.
A
course to encourage entrepreneurship will be implemented.Startup
KAIST will develop and commercialize innovative ideas from members of KAIST, and
the End Run project will enable students and faculty to establish a global,
venture company. KAIST hopes that a new entrepreneurial culture will be created
on campus, thereby the research success of KAIST members will lead to commercialization
and startups.KAIST
plans on releasing free internet lectures as part of its knowledge contribution
and sponsoring programs which will level the playing field in eduation.KAIST
will establish the KAIST Open Online Course (KOOC). An entrepreneurship
curriculum will be developed for KOOC. KAIST will start trials for KOOC from
2015, gradually expanding to include more courses.
2014.02.27 View 9398 -
Professor Yong-Tak Im of Mechanical Engineering Appointed as President of Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials
Yong-Tak Im, Professor of the Department of
Mechanical Engineering at KAIST, was sworn in on February 25, 2014 as
the 16th president of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials
(KIMM), a leading government-funded research institution in Korea. KIMM was
established in 1976 to contribute to the development of
Korea through the invention of source technology and technology transfer in
mechanical engineering.
President Im graduated from Seoul National
University, obtaining degrees of Bachelor of Science and Master’s in mechanical
engineering. He later studied at the University of California in Berkeley and
received a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering.
After working as an assistant professor of
the Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Ohio State University,
President Im joined KAIST as a professor of mechanical engineering in 1989.
President Im took many important posts at
KAIST, including Dean of Planning Office, Dean of External Affairs and Public
Relations Office, and Associate Vice President of Special Projects and
Institutional Relations, making a great addition to the university’s endeavors for
globalization.
Among the awards President Im received was the
William Johnson Award in 2007 presented by the Advances in Materials and
Processing Technologies, the Research Achievement Award in 2010 by the Global
Congress on Manufacturing and Management, and the Presidential Award in 2012 by
the Republic of Korea. He was also elected as the vice president of the Korean
Society of Mechanical Engineers, the largest association of professionals in
the mechanical engineering field in Korea.
President Im is currently a professor at
POSCO, an internationally known Korean steel company, and a member of the
Korean Academy of Science and Technology and the National Academy of
Engineering of Korea, respectively.
President Im will serve KIMM for three
years until February 24, 2017.
2014.02.25 View 10855 -
KAIST developed an extremely low-powered, high-performance head-mounted display embedding an augmented reality chip
Walking around the streets searching for a place to eat will be no hassle when a head-mounted display (HMD) becomes affordable and ubiquitous. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed K-Glass, a wearable, hands-free HMD that enables users to find restaurants while checking out their menus. If the user of K-Glass walks up to a restaurant and looks at the name of the restaurant, today’s menu and a 3D image of food pop up. The Glass can even show the number of tables available inside the restaurant. K-Glass makes this possible because of its built-in augmented reality (AR) processor. Unlike virtual reality which replaces the real world with a computer-simulated environment, AR incorporates digital data generated by the computer into the reality of a user. With the computer-made sensory inputs such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data, the user’s real and physical world becomes live and interactive. Augmentation takes place in real-time and in semantic context with surrounding environments, such as a menu list overlain on the signboard of a restaurant when the user passes by it, not an airplane flight schedule, which is irrelevant information, displayed. Most commonly, location-based or computer-vision services are used in order to generate AR effects. Location-based services activate motion sensors to identify the user’s surroundings, whereas computer-vision uses algorithms such as facial, pattern, and optical character recognition, or object and motion tracking to distinguish images and objects. Many of the current HMDs deliver augmented reality experiences employing location-based services by scanning the markers or barcodes printed on the back of objects. The AR system tracks the codes or markers to identify objects and then align them with virtual reality. However, this AR algorithm is difficult to use for the objects or spaces which do not have barcodes, QR codes, or markers, particularly those in outdoor environments and thus cannot be recognized. To solve this problem, Hoi-Jun Yoo, Professor of Electrical Engineering at KAIST and his team developed, for the first time in the world, an AR chip that works just like human vision. This processor is based on the Visual Attention Model (VAM) that duplicates the ability of human brain to process visual data. VAM, almost unconsciously or automatically, disentangles the most salient and relevant information about the environment in which human vision operates, thereby eliminating unnecessary data unless they must be processed. In return, the processor can dramatically speed up the computation of complex AR algorithms. The AR processor has a data processing network similar to that of a human brain’s central nervous system. When the human brain perceives visual data, different sets of neurons, all connected, work concurrently on each fragment of a decision-making process; one group’s work is relayed to other group of neurons for the next round of the process, which continues until a set of decider neurons determines the character of the data. Likewise, the artificial neural network allows parallel data processing, alleviating data congestion and reducing power consumption significantly. KAIST’s AR processor, which is produced using the 65 nm (nanometers) manufacturing process with the area of 32 mm2, delivers 1.22 TOPS (tera-operations per second) peak performance when running at 250 MHz and consumes 778 miliWatts on a 1.2V power supply. The ultra-low power processor shows 1.57 TOPS/W high efficiency rate of energy consumption under the real-time operation of 30fps/720p video camera, a 76% improvement in power conservation over other devices. The HMDs, available on the market including the Project Glass whose battery lasts only for two hours, have revealed so far poor performance. Professor Yoo said, “Our processor can work for long hours without sacrificing K-Glass’s high performance, an ideal mobile gadget or wearable computer, which users can wear for almost the whole day.” He further commented:“HMDs will become the next mobile device, eventually taking over smartphones. Their markets have been growing fast, and it’s really a matter of time before mobile users will eventually embrace an optical see-through HMD as part of their daily use. Through augmented reality, we will have richer, deeper, and more powerful reality in all aspects of our life from education, business, and entertainment to art and culture.” The KAIST team presented a research paper at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) held on February 9-13, 2014 in San Francisco, CA, which is entitled “1.22TOPS and 1.52mW/MHz Augmented Reality Multi-Core Processor with Neural Network NoC for HMD Applications.”Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqY30FOu2s&feature=c4-overview&list=UUirZA3OFhxP4YFreIJkTtXw
2014.02.20 View 16904 -
World's Largest Web Conference To Be Held in Korea
The 2014 International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2014), the world’s most prestigious academic conference in the field of web, will be held for the first time in Korea. The conference is to be last for five days at Seoul COEX, from 7th to 11th April. International World Wide Web Conference covers a wide range of web-related areas, including technologies, research papers, services and more. Since the first conference in 1994 in Switzerland, it has been held in various parts of North America, Europe, South America and Asia, attracting more than 1000 experts in the field. The 23rd International World Wide Web Conference is managed by the International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee (IW3C2) and co-hosted by KAIST and National Agency for Technology and Standards, as well as sponsored by Korea Information Science Society and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Keynote speakers for this year’s conference include inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, senior vice president of Microsoft, Dr. Qi Lu, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Prof. Christos Faloutsos, as well as Samsung Electronic’s vice president Jong-Deok Choi. In addition to WWW 2014, BigData Innovators Gathering (BIG 2014) and Web for Access (W4A 2014) is also to be held in joint. KAIST Computer Sciences Department’s Prof. Jinwan Jeong, in charge of directing this year’s conference, said “From one-sided 1st generation web to two-way 2nd generation web, such as blogs, and then recently to the 3rd generation web, which include social networks and semantic webs, the web technologies has grown vastly over the past 25 years. WWW 2014 will be the opportunity for Korea to discuss with the world about the informatization and future of the web.” Pre-registration for WWW 2014 can be applied at the official webpage for WWW 2014 (http://www2014.kr) before 17th February.
2014.02.14 View 10548 -
Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo Appointed as the First Asian University Chairman of the ISSCC
Hoi-Jun Yoo, a professor of Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST, was chosen to be the first Asian University Chairman of the ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) held in San Francisco, USA, from February 10 to 13, 2014. His term will last one year from April, 2014. Professor Yoo ranked tenth globally in thesis achievement over the 60-year history of the ISSCC. He ranked fourth globally over the last ten years and was the highest-ranked member from Asia over that time. He received an award for this remarkable achievement in 2012. ISSC is a world-renowned conference in the semiconductor field, where only 200 strictly selected papers are presented by semiconductor-related enterprises, research centers, and university representatives. Nicknamed the “The Olympics of the Semiconductor”, ISSCC runs for 4 days and hosts more than 3000 semiconductor engineers from around the world. It is most famous for the first CPU presentation by Intel and the first memory technology release of Samsung. Professor Yoo stated, “The Korean Semiconductor Engineering is leading the world’s technology instead of imitating it.” He aspires to devote himself to upgrading semiconductor engineering around the world.
2014.02.14 View 10428 -
Hyun-Sik Kim, KAIST doctoral student, receives Predoctoral Achievement Award from IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society
Hyun-Sik Kim, a Ph.D. student from the Department of Electrical Engineering, is scheduled to receive the “Predoctoral Achievement Award” from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Solid-State Circuit Society (SSCS) at its 2014 annual conference to be held on February 9-13 in San Francisco, USA. Kim, the first Korean student receiving the award, will also be given a 1,000 USD honorarium.
Established in 1983, the Predoctoral Achievement Award has been given to a small number of promising graduate students, which is made on the basis of academic record and potential, quality of publications, and a graduate study program well matched to the charter of SSCS. Among the previous recipients were Professor Bernhard Boser of the University of California in Berkeley and Professor Michael Flynn of Michigan University.
Kim published 15 research papers in international journals and conferences, applied for 35 domestic and international patents, and received the best paper award in human technology from Samsun Electronics for three consecutive years.
Professor Kyu-Hyung Cho of Electrical Engineering is Kim's principal advisor.
2014.01.27 View 10916 -
Professor Yong-Hee Lee of Physics Received the Humboldt Research Award
In recognition of his past accomplishments in research and teaching, Professor Yong-Hee Lee of Physics at KAIST received the Humboldt Research Award in November 2013. The Humboldt Research Award is annually given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to internationally renowned scientists and scholars in the fields of biology, chemistry, computer science, economics, linguistics, management, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and physics. The winners of the award are offered with 60,000 Euros of research grant as well as an opportunity to undertake prolonged periods of research in collaboration with researchers in Germany.Professor Lee, who may be the first Korean physicist receiving the award, plans to conduct joint research with colleagues at the Technical University of Berlin and University of Würzburg.
2014.01.05 View 8794 -
Professor Jin-Hyung Kim appointed as the founding director of the Software Policy Research Center
Professor Jin-Hyung Kim from the Department of Computer Science at KAIST was appointed as the founding director of the newly established research institute, the Software Policy Research Center. He will serve as director for three years. The research center will undertake studies and analysis on software policy, statistics, and new software technology.
2014.01.05 View 8505 -
KAIST Student Awarded Prize from Energy Saving Contest
Jun-Min Kwon, an undergraduate student in the Department of Chemistry at KAIST, was awarded a prize from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Republic of Korea, at the 35th Energy Saving Contest which was held on November 20.
The student club he has been leading was also selected as one of the best groups by the Save Energy Save Earth (SESE), a volunteer organization supported by the Korea Energy Management Corporation and the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Republic of Korea.
Kwon began promoting energy conservation through a blog and participated in related meetings and workshops as a high school student to improve the understanding on the importance of energy saving and recycling.He also received awards from the Second National Assembly Forum on Climate Change, the Korean National Science Fair, as well as the Samsung Human Tech Paper Award.
2013.12.24 View 12569 -
Rechargeable Lithium Sulfur Battery for Greater Battery Capacity
Professor Do Kyung Kim from the Department of Material Science and Engineering and Professor Jang Wook Choi from the Graduate School of EEWS have been featured in the lead story of the renowned nanoscience journal Advanced Materials for their research on the lithium sulfur battery. This new type of battery developed by Professor Kim is expected to have a longer life battery life and [higher] energy density than currently commercial batteries.
With ample energy density up to 2100Wh/kg—almost 5.4 times that of lithium ion batteries—lithium sulfur batteries can withstand the sharp decrease in energy capacity resulting from charging and discharging—which has been considered the inherent limitation of the conventional batteries.
Professor Kim and his research team used one-dimensional, vertical alignment of 75nm tick, 15μm long sulfur nanowires to maximize electric conductivity. Then, to prevent loss of battery life, they carbon-coated each nanowire and prohibited direct contact between the sulfur and electrolyte.
The result was one of the most powerful batteries in terms of both energy performance and density. Compared to conventional batteries which suffer from continuous decrease in energy capacity after being discharged, the lithium sulfur battery maintained 99.2% of its initial capacity after being charged and discharged 300 times and up to 70% even after 1000 times.
Professor Kim claims that his new battery is an important step forward towards a high-performance rechargeable battery which is a vital technology for unmanned vehicles, electric automobiles and energy storage. He hopes that his research can solve the problems of battery-capacity loss and contribute to South Korea’s leading position in battery technology. Professor Kim’s research team has filed applications for one domestic and international patent for their research.
2013.12.11 View 12545