KAIST has signed an agreement with the tech giant Google to develop an AI curriculum for KAIST. The program, led by Professor Changho Suh from the School of Electrical Engineering and Professor Yong-Jin Yoon from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, will be completed as part of an agreement signed by KAIST and Google in July to foster AI talents.

The two professors will develop courses that utilize Google’s technology (TensorFlow, Google Cloud, Android) over a year, and will be funded with 7,500 USD per subject. The Graduate School of AI conducted a month-long public offering from August for KAIST’s entire faculty and selected Professor Suh’s “TensorFlow for Information Theory and Convex Optimization” and Professor Yoon’s “AI Convergence Project Based Learning (PBL)” after internal KAIST judging process and Google’s final approval.

President Sung-Chul Shin signed a partnership agreement with Google earlier this year

 

The “AI Convergence PBL” curriculum notably is designed for AI beginners, including KAIST students and faculty. It will be composed of exploring and defining problems by utilizing AI simply and experiencing the process of developing products that apply AI through design thinking, which involves product design, production, and verification process.

“We are planning to develop data-based Internet of Things sensors and AI-applied education tools for future beginners as well as hold AI-applied invention and start-up competitions to popularize AI application education,” Professor Yoon stated.

In addition, Professor Suh will tackle the field of “information theory and convergence”, which is based on basic science and engineering as well as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, which have been in trend. The course aims to grow skilled AI researchers adept in both theory and application through the use of TensorFlow, an open-source software from Google for machine learning and deep learning, and linking the cumulative theory with AI.

“Jumping off from the development of AI curriculum, we will continue to make efforts to introduce short-term non-degree courses for the general public,” an official from the Graduate School of AI explained.

Meanwhile, KAIST has established AI-Focused Research Awards through its partnership with Google, which supports world-class faculty members conducting cutting-edge research. Since October 2018, Professor Sung Ju Hwang from the Graduate School of AI and Professor Euijong Whang from the School of Electrical Engineering have been collaborating with Google researchers and engineers to conduct in-depth research on AI with 50,000 USD funding per professor. In addition to the AI-Focused Research Awards, the two professors received 25,000 USD-worth of credits that can be used within Google’s cloud platform for research. The projects have been extended to 2020.

Additionally, Sungjoon Park, a PhD student in the School of Computing, was selected as a Fellow of Google’s Natural Language Processing Division in 2019. KAIST plans to maintain its partnership with Google for two years and pursue various research and education endeavors.

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