research
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Professor Jinah Park Received the Prime Minister's Award
Professor Jinah Park of the School of Computing received the Prime Minister’s Citation Ribbon on April 21 at a ceremony celebrating the Day of Science and ICT. The awardee was selected by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and Korea Communications Commission.
Professor Park was recognized for her convergence R&D of a VR simulator for dental treatment with haptic feedback, in addition to her research on understanding 3D interaction behavior in VR environments. Her major academic contributions are in the field of medical imaging, where she developed a computational technique to analyze cardiac motion from tagging data.
Professor Park said she was very pleased to see her twenty-plus years of research on ways to converge computing into medical areas finally bear fruit. She also thanked her colleagues and students in her Computer Graphics and CGV Research Lab for working together to make this achievement possible.
2017.04.26 View 7968 -
KAIST Ranked Top in Korea, 8th in Asia in 2017 THE Asia Rankings
KAIST ranked top among Korean universities and 8th in Asia according to the 2017 THE (Times Higher Education) Asia University Rankings published on March 16. This is the first time that KAIST took the top position in Korea in the THE rankings.
The 2017 THE Asia University Rankings rank the top 300 universities in Asia, employing five performance indicators: teaching, research, citations, industry income, and international outlook.
KAIST jumped two spots from last year to rank first in Korea with outstanding improvements in teaching and research this year, while earning the perfect score for industry income for the second consecutive year.
2017.03.17 View 3287 -
Professor Hahn Named Sangnam Business Researcher Awardee
Professor Minhi Hahn of the School of Management Engineering at the KAIST College of Business has been named the winner of the 22nd Sangnam Business Researcher Award. The Sangnam Award is the highest distinction made by the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration to recognize an outstanding scholar in the field of business & management for that year.
His research focuses on how marketing communication impacts customer choices and their satisfaction. Professor Hahn has served on the faculty of the College of Business since 1989, and has supervised more than 21 Ph.D.s and 203 master’s students while publishing more than 51 papers in domestic and foreign journals. He served as dean of the KAIST College of Business, president of the Korean Marketing Association, and president of the Korean Society of Consumer Studies. Currently Professor Hahn is a board member on the strategic committee of the College of Management at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.
Professor Hahn said, “I am pleased to receive this award on behalf of the people who are working for the development of Korean business administration. I will do my utmost to support younger scholars to continue their meaningful research." The award ceremony will take place at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul on February 23.
2017.02.19 View 6251 -
KAIST Alumni of the Year
(From left Chul-Hwan Kim, president and CEO of Orange Power, Hooshik Kim, president & CEO of Vieworks, Chilhee Chung, presient of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, KAIST President Sung-Mo Kang, KAIST Alumni Association President Jung-Sik Ko, Won-Pil Baek, senior vice president for R&D program at Korea Atomic Energy Research Insitute, Hyonho Jung, CEO of Medytox, Jaehwa Kim on behalf of Han-Oh Park, president & CEO of Bioneer Corporation)
The KAIST Alumni Association presented the Alumni of the Year award to six of its most accomplished alumni at the New Year dinner held at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul on January 14.
KAIST alumni community, which numbers over 500,000, has made a significant impact around the globe in science and technology, industry, education, and the public sector. Each year, the KAIST Alumni Association honors individuals who have made a significant contribution with outstanding leadership through the Alumni of the Year awards.
KAIST Alumni Association President Jung-Sik Ko awarded the recipients at the dinner. About 200 alumni, faculty, and students, including KAIST President Sung-Mo Kang, joined the celebration.
The 2016 awardees are Dr. Chilhee Chung, president of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology(SAIT); Dr.Won-Pil Baek, senior vice president for R&D program at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute(KAERI); Dr.Han-Oh Park, president & CEO of Bioneer Corporation; Dr.Hyonho Jung, CEO of Medytox; Hooshik Kim, president & CEO of Vieworks; and Dr.Chul-Hwan Kim, president & CEO of Orange Power.
Dr. Chung of SAIT (MS in physics ’79) played a leading role in developing top-notch system semiconductors and memory device technology while serving as president of the Samsung Electronic Semiconductor R&D Center. He has focused on the development of cutting-edge future technology, the Quantum Dot, by incorporating eco-friendly materials with the highest efficiency and color purity which is cadmium-free.
Working at KAERI since 2001, Dr. Baek (Ph.D. in nuclear and quantum engineering ’87) has made contributions to help Korea emerge as a nuclear technology powerhouse. He played a critical role in developing and facilitating a global nuclear safety verification facility dubbed ‘ATLAS.’ Such nuclear technological prowess led the Korean government to advance into the foreign markets, such as exporting nuclear power plants to United Arab Emirates.
The CEO of Bioneer, Dr. Park (Ph.D. in chemistry ’87) started a bio-venture in Korea. His company has developed hundreds of reagents, diagnostic kits, and advanced equipment for gene research over two decades. Bioneer has paved the way for establishing a world-class level of infrastructure in genomic technology. By developing the innovative technology "SAMiRNA ™ (Self-Assembled-Micelle-inhibitory-RNA)" that overcomes the problems in drug development, Bioneer presented a new solution for the treatment of incurable diseases. In collaboration with global pharmaceutical companies and research groups, Dr. Park has successfully led joint development in the licensing of new therapeutic medicine candidates for various incurable diseases.
Dr. Jung (Ph.D. in biological sciences ’88) founded the bio-pharmaceutical company Medytox in 2000. Medytox is the first company in Korea that commercialized botulinum toxin formulation. Medytox developed the non-animal liquid botulinum toxin formulation for the first time in the world. It successfully localized botulinum preparation that can treat various neurological diseases. Medytox’s new toxin formulation resulted in improving public health care as well as relieving the heavy dependence on importing bio-pharmaceutical products.
As the CEO of Vieworks, Kim (MS in physics ’95) succeeded in commercializing of digital X-ray. Especially, it is leading the design of optical and image systems that affect the quality of digital X-ray image. Kim’s company established related technology base, contributing to human health promotion and national industrial development.
President Kim of Orange Power (Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering ’93) is also the founder of the KITE Entrepreneurship Foundation. He launched Biogenix Co., Ltd. and Image and Materials Co. in 2005. In order to nurture an entrepreneurship and start-ups eco-system, he invested 10 billion KRW from the proceeds of the sale of one of his start-ups. In addition, he started Orange Power Co., Ltd. in 2012 to solve the secondary battery heat problem and established a global partnership with Hydro Quebec in Canada, Nexion in UK, Volkswagen of Germany, and Tesla of the US.
2017.01.16 View 10761 -
MOU between KAIST and DTU Signed
KAIST and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate in the areas of startup, student exchange, and joint research on October 25, 2016 at the Embassy of Denmark in Seoul, Korea. Under the agreement, KAIST and DTU will exchange students and researchers through startup programs and continue to collaborating in education and research.
The MOU was facilitated during the Green Growth Alliance Meeting and Energy Seminar hosted by the Danish embassy, in which Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen participated.
President Steve Kang of KAIST, who fostered the agreement, said,
“DTU has been one of our strategic partners in Europe. We have been working closely with them on academic exchanges and research collaborations, but now with the expansion of our cooperation into entrepreneurship, we will create momentum to spur startups in both schools. To support such activities, we will use KAIST’s experiences acquired from operating the K-School, an entrepreneurship graduate school, and the Institute of KAIST Entrepreneurship. DTU will also share their knowledge on startup programs including SkyLab and StartDTU. I believe this will become another successful alliance between the two universities.”
As of October 2016, KAIST has made 18 agreements with DTU, exchanging 120 students in the past three years and implementing various joint seminars and conferences for academic and research exchanges.
Established in 1829, DTU has been a leading science and technology university in Denmark. It ranked 109 in the QS World University Rankings 2016 and 46th in its subject rankings in engineering and technology.
In the picture below, President Steve Kang of KAIST (right) and Senior Vice President Martin P. Bendsøe of the Technical University of Denmark (left) are signing an agreement for academic and research cooperation.
2016.10.27 View 7293 -
Top 10 Emerging Technologies by World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on Emerging Technologies announced its annual list of breakthrough technologies, the “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016,” on June 23, 2016. The Meta-Council chose the top ten technologies based on the technologies’ potential to improve lives, transform industries, and safeguard the planet. The research field of systems metabolic engineering, founded by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at KAIST, was also citied. Systems metabolic engineering, which combines elements of synthetic biology, systems biology, and evolutionary engineering, offers a sustainable process for the production of useful chemicals in an environmentally friendly way from plants such as inedible biomass, reducing the need of using fossil fuels. Details about the list follow below:
https://www.weforum.org/press/2016/06/battery-powered-villages-sociable-robots-rank-among-top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2016
The picture below shows the “systems metabolic engineering of E. coli for the production of PLGA." PLGA is poly(lactate-co-glycolate), which is widely used for biomedical applications, and has been made by chemical synthesis. Now it is possible to produce PLGA eco-friendly by one-step fermentation of a gut bacterium which is developed through systems metabolic engineering.
2016.06.27 View 9736 -
HUBO to Present at the 2016 World Economic Forum
KAIST researchers will lead an IdeasLab on biotechnology for an aging society while HUBO, the winner of the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge, will interact with the forum participants, offering an experience of state-of-the-art robotics technology.
Representatives from KAIST will attend the 2016 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum to run an IdeasLab and showcase its humanoid robot.
With over 2,500 leaders from business, government, international organizations, civil society, academia, media, and the arts expected to participate, the 2016 Annual Meeting will take place on January 20-23, 2016 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Under the theme of “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” global leaders will discuss the period of digital transformation that will have profound effects on economies, societies, and human behavior.
President Sung-Mo Kang will join the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), a high-level academic meeting to foster collaboration among experts on issues of global concern for the future of higher education and the role of science in society. He will discuss how the emerging revolution in technology will affect the way universities operate and serve society. KAIST is the only Korean university participating in GULF, which is composed of prestigious universities invited from around the world.
Four KAIST professors, including Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, will lead an IdeasLab on “Biotechnology for an Aging Society.”
Professor Lee said, “In recent decades, much attention has been paid to the potential effect of the growth of an aging population and problems posed by it. At our IdeasLab, we will introduce some of our research breakthroughs in biotechnology to address the challenges of an aging society.”
In particular, he will present his latest research in systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering. His research has explained the mechanisms of how traditional Oriental medicine works in our bodies by identifying structural similarities between effective compounds in traditional medicine and human metabolites, and has proposed more effective treatments by employing such compounds.
KAIST will also display its networked mobile medical service system, “Dr. M.” Built upon a ubiquitous and mobile Internet, such as the Internet of Things, wearable electronics, and smart homes and vehicles, Dr. M will provide patients with a more affordable and accessible healthcare service.
In addition, Professor Jun-Ho Oh of the Mechanical Engineering Department will showcase his humanoid robot, “HUBO,” during the Annual Meeting. His research team won the International Humanoid Robotics Challenge hosted by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was held in Pomona, California, on June 5-6, 2015. With 24 international teams participating in the finals, HUBO completed all eight tasks in 44 minutes and 28 seconds, 6 minutes earlier than the runner-up, and almost 11 minutes earlier than the third-place team. Team KAIST walked away with the grand prize of USD 2 million.
Professor Oh said, “Robotics technology will grow exponentially in this century, becoming a real driving force to expedite the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I hope HUBO will offer an opportunity to learn about the current advances in robotics technology.”
President Kang pointed out, “KAIST has participated in the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum since 2011 and has engaged with a broad spectrum of global leaders through numerous presentations and demonstrations of our excellence in education and research. Next year, we will choreograph our first robotics exhibition on HUBO and present high-tech research results in biotechnology, which, I believe, epitomizes how science and technology breakthroughs in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will shape our future in an unprecedented way.”
2015.11.18 View 11173 -
Using Light to Treat Alzheimer's Disease
Medical application of photoactive chemicals offers a promising therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases.
A research team jointly led by Professor Chan Beum Park of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at KAIST and Dr. Kwon Yu from the Bionano Center at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) conducted research to suppress an abnormal assembly of beta-amyloids, a protein commonly found in the brain, by using photo-excited porphyrins.
Beta-amyloid plaques are known to cause Alzheimer's disease. This research finding suggests new ways to treat neurodegenerative illnesses including Alzheimer's disease. It was published online as the lead article in the September 21th issue of Angewandte Chemie. The title of the article is “Photo-excited Porphyrins as a Strong Suppressor of ß-Amyloid Aggregation and Synaptic Toxicity.”
Light-induced treatments using organic photosensitizers have advantages to managing the treatment in time and area. In the case of cancer treatments, doctors use photodynamic therapies where a patient is injected with an organic photosensitizer, and a light is shed on the patient’s lesion. However, such therapies had never been employed to treat neurodegenerative diseases.
Alzheimer's starts when a protein called beta-amyloid is created and deposited in a patient’s brain. The abnormally folded protein created this way harms the brain cells by inducing the degradation of brain functions, for example, dementia. If beta-amyloid creation can be suppressed at an early stage, the formation of amyloid deposits will stop. This could prevent Alzheimer’s disease or halt its progress.
The research team effectively prevented the buildup of beta-amyloids by using blue LED lights and a porphyrin inducer, which is a biocompatible organic compound. By absorbing light energy, a photosensitizer such as porphyrin reaches the excitation state. Active oxygen is created as the porphyrin returns to its ground state. The active oxygen oxidizes a beta-amyloid monomer, and by combining with it, disturbs its assembly.
The technique was tested on drosophilae or fruit flies, which were produced to model Alzheimer on invertebrates. The research showed that symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in the fruit flies such as damage on synapse and muscle, neuronal apoptosis, degradation in motility, and decreased longevity were alleviated. Treatments with light provide additional benefits: less medication is needed than other drug treatments, and there are fewer side effects. When developed, photodynamic therapy will be used widely for this reason.
Professor Park said, “This work has significance as it was the first case to use light and photosensitizers to stop deposits of beta-amyloids. We plan to carry the research further by testing compatibility with other organic and inorganic photosensitizers and by changing the subject of photodynamic therapy to vertebrate such as mice.”
Picture 1 – Deposits of Beta-Amyloid in Fruit Flies Stopped by Using Porphyrin and Blue LED Lights
Picture 2 – The Research Finding Published as the Lead Article in Angewandte Chemie (September 2015)
2015.11.11 View 10557 -
Professor Key-Sun Choi Receives the Order of Service Merit Green Stripes from the Korean Government
The award recognizes Professor Choi’s life-long research effort to make Korean language digitally available, both nationally and internationally.
Professor Key-Sun Choi of the School of Computing at KAIST received the Order of Service Merit Green Stripes from the Korean government at the 569th Korean Language Day, held annually to commemorate the invention of the Korean language, Hangeul. The ceremony took place on October 9, 2015, at the Sejong Center in Seoul.
Professor Choi has distinguished himself in the field of natural language processing (NLP), including Korean language. He developed a Korean NLP parser that enabled information processing and data analysis of Korean language, as well as a digital Korean dictionary, contributing to the advancement of Korean language-based information technology.
Professor Choi also led the way to widespread use of Korean natural language in computing by developing and commercializing open source software to process the Korean language.
He has served leading roles in many of the international academic societies and standardization organizations, among others, as the vice president of Infoterm (the International Information Center for Terminology), president of the Asia Federation of Natural Language Processing, vice chair of ISO/TC 37, a technical committee in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and a council member for the International Association of Machine Translation.
2015.10.08 View 7576 -
KAIST's DRC-HUBO Wins the DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015
DRC-HUBO finished all eight assignments in less than 45 minutes, taking first place among 24 international teams and claiming the USD 2 million prize offered by a US defense research agency.
The Robotics Challenge Finals 2015 hosted by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) took place on June 5-6, 2015 at the Fairplex in Pomona, California.
Team KAIST of the Republic of Korea led by Professor Jun-Ho Oh of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Professor In-So Kweon of the Electrical Engineering Department, and researchers from Rainbow Co., the university’s spin-off company that builds the robots, won the DARPA Finals. The team received USD 2 million as a prize.
The DARPA’s Robotics Challenge (DRC) promotes a competition of robot systems and software teams which seek to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident in 2011. The DRC consists of three competitions: a software-based Virtual Robotics Challenge which took place in June 2013; the Robotics Challenge Trials in Homestead, Florida, in December 2013; and the Finals in June 2015.
A total of 24 teams from universities and private and public research institutes from Korea, the US, Hong Kong, Germany, Japan, and Italy participated in the Finals. The participating teams had to finish eight assignments in 60 minutes, during which their robots were untethered and operated wirelessly without communication from their engineers.
Each team was assigned a series of tasks: they included driving a vehicle, getting out of a vehicle, opening a door, turning a valve, drilling a hole in a wall, a surprise task such as pushing a button or turning on a switch, walking over rubble or debris, and climbing stairs. Robots scored a point each time they completed their missions. To win, a team had to complete all the tasks successfully in the shortest amount of time possible.
Team KAIST completed the entire course in 44 minutes and 28 seconds, followed by the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) Robotics in Pensacola, Florida in 50:26, and Team TARTAN Rescue of the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University in 55:15.
For details, see an article below from the New York Times:
New York Times, June 6, 2015
“Korean Robot Makers Walk Off With $2 Million Prize”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/science/korean-robot-makers-walk-off-with-2-million-prize.html?_r=1
DRC-HUBO sticks a plug into an outlet for the surprise task at the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge on June 5-6, 2015, in Pomona, California.
DRC-HUBO turns a valve in a clockwise direction.
DRC-HUBO drills to cut a circle into the wall.
Members of Team KAIST pose together after the award ceremony on June 6, 2015.
2015.06.07 View 22503 -
Professor Shim Featured with His Drone System in IEEE Spectrum
The IEEE Spectrum, a technology and science magazine published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), featured an article of KAIST’s autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) entitled “South Korea Prepares for Drone vs. Drone Combat,” posted on April 1, 2015.
The article introduces the anti-drone defense system being developed by Professor “David” Hyunchul Shim of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at KAIST. With the goal of developing guard drones that can detect and capture unknown UAVs, the anti-drone defense system consists of reconnaissance drones, agile multi-rotor UAVs equipped with nets which are dropped to snare enemy drones, and transport UAVs to carry smaller drones.
Professor Shim currently leads KAIST’s Unmanned System Research Group (USRG, http://unmanned.kaist.ac.kr/) and Center of Field Robotics for Innovation, Exploration, aNd Defense (C-FRIEND).
For the article, please go to http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/south-korea-drone-vs-drone.
2015.04.02 View 11494 -
Mutations Occurring Only in Brain Responsible for Intractable Epilepsy Identified
KAIST researchers have discovered that brain somatic mutations in MTOR gene induce intractable epilepsy and suggest a precision medicine to treat epileptic seizures.
Epilepsy is a brain disorder which afflicts more than 50 million people worldwide. Many epilepsy patients can control their symptoms through medication, but about 30% suffer from intractable epilepsy and are unable to manage the disease with drugs. Intractable epilepsy causes multiple seizures, permanent mental, physical, and developmental disabilities, and even death. Therefore, surgical removal of the affected area from the brain has been practiced as a treatment for patients with medically refractory seizures, but this too fails to provide a complete solution because only 60% of the patients who undergo surgery are rendered free of seizures.
A Korean research team led by Professor Jeong Ho Lee of the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Professor Dong-Seok Kim of Epilepsy Research Center at Yonsei University College of Medicine has recently identified brain somatic mutations in the gene of mechanistic target of rapamycin (MTOR) as the cause of focal cortical dysplasia type II (FCDII), one of the most important and common inducers to intractable epilepsy, particularly in children. They propose a targeted therapy to lessen epileptic seizures by suppressing the activation of mTOR kinase, a signaling protein in the brain. Their research results were published online in Nature Medicine on March 23, 2015.
FCDII contributes to the abnormal developments of the cerebral cortex, ranging from cortical disruption to severe forms of cortical dyslamination, balloon cells, and dysplastic neurons. The research team studied 77 FCDII patients with intractable epilepsy who had received a surgery to remove the affected regions from the brain. The researchers used various deep sequencing technologies to conduct comparative DNA analysis of the samples obtained from the patients’ brain and blood, or saliva. They reported that about 16% of the studied patients had somatic mutations in their brain. Such mutations, however, did not take place in their blood or saliva DNA.
Professor Jeong Ho Lee of KAIST said, “This is an important finding. Unlike our previous belief that genetic mutations causing intractable epilepsy exist anywhere in the human body including blood, specific gene mutations incurred only in the brain can lead to intractable epilepsy. From our animal models, we could see how a small fraction of mutations carrying neurons in the brain could affect its entire function.”
The research team recapitulated the pathogenesis of intractable epilepsy by inducing the focal cortical expression of mutated mTOR in the mouse brain via electroporation method and observed as the mouse develop epileptic symptoms. They then treated these mice with the drug called “rapamycin” to inhibit the activity of mTOR protein and observed that it suppressed the development of epileptic seizures with cytomegalic neurons.
“Our study offers the first evidence that brain-somatic activating mutations in MTOR cause FCDII and identifies mTOR as a treatment target for intractable epilepsy,” said co-author Dr. Dong-Seok Kim, a neurosurgeon at Yonsei Medical Center with the country’s largest surgical experiences in treating patients with this condition.
The research paper is titled “Brain somatic mutations in MTOR cause focal cortical dysplasia type II leading to intractable epilepsy.” (Digital Object Identifier #: 10.1038/nm.3824)
Picture 1: A schematic image to show how to detect brain specific mutation using next-generation sequencing technology with blood-brain paired sample. Simple comparison of non-overlapping mutations between affected and unaffected tissues is able to detect brain specific mutations.
Picture 2: A schematic image to show how to generate focal cortical dysplasia mouse model. This mouse model open the new window of drug screening for seizure patients.
Picture 3: Targeted medicine can rescue the focal cortical dysplasia symptoms including cytomegalic neuron & intractable epilepsy.
2015.03.25 View 13299