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Professor Junil Choi’s lab received the Best Paper Award at the 2022 ICT Academic Paper Competition.

 

 

 

 

 

Link: 

https://news.kaist.ac.kr/news/html/news/?mode=V&mng_no=24950

https://digitalchosun.dizzo.com/site/data/html_dir/2022/11/17/2022111780240.html

https://www.etnews.com/20221117000327

[Seok-Ho Seo (M.S. candidate), Dong-Hoon Kim (M.S.), Beom-Jin Kim (M.S.), Seung-Woo Park (M.S. candidate), Professor Shinhyun Choi]

 

KAIST EE professor Shinhyun Choi and his research team announced on 16^th that they successfully developed a synthetic synapse transistor, whose durability allows it to perform repetitive operations with high reliability. The developed transistor, which emulates the behaviors of a neurotransmitter in a human brain, can also increase the learning accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI) without requiring additional circuits. By not only exploiting the structure utilized in conventional NAND Flash memory but also successfully coping with its low durability, Professor Choi and his research team were able to develop the transistor that can reliably play the role of a synapse. 

 

This research accomplishment was published in the October editorial of Nature communications under the title of “The gate injection-based field-effect synapse transistor with linear conductance update for online training”, in which Seok-Ho Seo (M.S. candidate), Dong-Hoon Kim (M.S.), Beom-Jin Kim (M.S.), and Seung-Woo Park (M.S. candidate) were all listed as co-first authors. 

 

KAIST EE M.S. candidate Seok-Ho Seo stated that “In addition to this research project, I want to keep on developing novel device technologies for neuromorphic computing.”

This research was supported in part by National Research Foundation of Korea, Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology, National NanoFab center, and Samsung Science & Technology Foundation.

 

 On Nov. 8^th, Professor Hyunjoo Jenny Lee (KAIST EE) and Dr. Jeongyeon Kim (Korea Brain Research Institute, KBRI) announced a joint development of a general-purpose ultrasound stimulation and monitoring system for the brain activity of small animals.

 

This technology can stimulate the brain depending on the sleeping condition monitored in real-time, and the research team demonstrated that sleep patterns and short-term memory could be controlled through stimulation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during the non-rapid-eye movement (NREM) sleep cycle.

 The conventional ultrasound stimulation systems are either too large to be used on free-moving mice, or difficult to use for simultaneous measurements due to large noise signals.

 

Professor Hyunjoo Lee’s team sought to solve these issues through MEMS-based CMUT (Capacity Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer) research and was able to develop a customizable, closed-loop system that stimulates the brain based on its current state. Their closed-loop stimulation algorithm is able to analyze the sleep phase every 6 seconds and deliver ultrasound stimulation during the NREM sleep cycle, both in a simultaneous process without significant noise. Stimulating the PFC of sleep-deprived mice for 10 hours during NREM sleep cycle showed an increase in rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep duration and short-term spatial memory protection from acute sleep deprivation.

 

“Ultrasound is a very safe human body irradiation technology, enough that it is used even for fetal imaging”, says Professor Hyunjoo Jenny Lee, “and it is a very attractive means of noninvasive treatment because its radiation can be intensively focused deep inside the body without spreading.” She added, “however, there is little research on the efficacy of ultrasound stimulation due to the lack of preclinical stimulation systems. I hope that our work could be used by many brain science research teams in discovering various therapeutic effects of ultrasound.”

 

The study was led by Ph.D. candidate Yehhyun Jo (KAIST EE) under professor Hyunjoo Lee, and Dr. Jeongyeon Kim’s research team, with participation of Seong-Gi Kim (Head of Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute of Basic Science), Dr. Byung Chul Lee (KAIST), and professor Greg S.B. Suh (KAIST Department of Biological Sciences). Their work was published on Oct. 19^th in the international journal Advanced Science, and was selected as the Research Headline by the publisher Wiley. (Title: General-purpose ultrasound neuromodulation system for chronic, closed-loop preclinical studies in freely behaving rodents)

 

This research was supported by the Next Generation Intelligence Semiconductor Program through National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), the Engineering Research Center of Excellence (ERC) Program, Korea Brain Research Institute’s Basic Research Program, and the Korea Medical Device Development Fund.

 

Reference link : 

 

[Ph.D. candidate See-On Park, Ph.D. candidate Hakcheon Jeong, Master course Jong-Yong Park and Professor Shinhyun Choi, From left] 

 

See-On Park, Hakcheon Jeong, Jong-Yong Park, researchers under EE Professor Shinhyun Choi, developed a highly reliable variable resistor (memristor) array that simulates the behavior of neurons using a metal oxide layer with an oxygen concentration gradient, and published their work in Nature Communications.

The study was selected for the Nature Communications’ Editor’s highlight, as well as for the Featured Image on the journal website’s front page. 

 

Link : https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

 

At KAIST, their research was introduced as one of the breakthrough researches of Fall 2022 within the College of Engineering. 

 

[Figure 1. The Featured Image in the Nature Communications front page introducing the KAIST team’s research on the memristor for artificial neurons] 

 

(Thesis title: Experimental demonstration of highly reliable dynamic memristor for artificial neuron and neuromorphic computing) 

This research was conducted with the support from the Samsung Research Funding & Incubation Center of Samsung Electronics

 

 

[Professor Sanghun Jeon]

 

 

KAIST EE Professor Sanghun Jeon received commendation from the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy at the 15th Semiconductor Day. 

Celebrating its 15^th anniversary this year, Semiconductor day is an annual event in which those who contributed to the development of the semiconductor industry are recognized and commended for their efforts in the field of industry, academia, and research. It first started in order to celebrate October of 1994, the first year in which the export of semiconductor for South Korea reached over 10 billion US dollars for the first time ever. The event holds special significance this year in that 2022 marks the 32th anniversary of Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA, founded in November 11^th, 1991), infusing the semiconductor industry with hope of overcoming new challenges through innovation.

Sanghun Jeon was nominated for the commendation from the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy thanks to his worldwide leadership and contribution in innovating thin-film processes and device manufacturing, creating research breakthroughs that help the commercialization of ferroelectric hafnium devices that are highly suitable for CMOS process.

Unlike the conventional devices whose computational capabilities are constrained by Moore’s law and von Neumann computer architectures and thereby impose significant limitation on device performance and energy efficiency, ferroelectric hafnium devices are expected to bring into reality Edge Intelligence (EI), which allows the local analysis of dataset and autonomous decision-making.

Sanghun Jeon and his research lab are developing key effective technologies related to ferroelectric hafnium devices, which are expected to play a key role in future device industry. The relevant research accomplishments were presented at IDEM 2021, one of the most prestigious conferences in the field of electronic devices. They will also be presented at IDEM 2022. 

[Prof. David Hyunchul Shim]