Doctor Tae-Woo Park, a recent graduate of KAIST Department of Computer Science, was appointed as a professor at the Michigan State University in East Lansing. During his studies at KAIST, he was advised by Professors Junehwa Song and Uichin Lee. While there have been cases where KAIST graduates were granted professorships abroad, Park is the first graduate to directly join a university faculty without further research experience after graduation.

Doctor Park developed games that would be beneficial to everyday life, and imbued practical and functional aspects into games that could be applied to a variety of areas, from individual workouts, education, and medical checkups to social mobilization. He emphasized on formulating games to be ubiquitous, so that the full demographic composition could fully realize their potential. Also, his games are pervasive in nature, where the gaming experience is protracted into the user’s life. These games, when played, often have real life consequences.

From a comprehensive knowledge in content design, gaming technologies, control, game analysis techniques, Doctor Park developed a game for running machines called Swan Boat, which detects the speed at which a user runs, and projects the data into a gaming platform to be enjoyed. He also developed various exercise-based gaming platforms, which can be used during cycling and jumping ropes. The Swan Boat game is currently installed in the Expo Science Park in Daejeon.

One of Doctor Park’s advisors, Professor Junehwa Song stated, “KAIST graduates are the vanguard of the domestic online gaming industry. Doctor Park has proved that KAIST has systematized gaming as an academic discipline and projected this trend on an international scale.” At Michigan State University, Doctor Park plans to research gaming applications based on a mobile and ubiquitous environment.

Michigan State University, located in East Lansing, is a public research university established in 1855 and is the first land-grant university in the United States. The College of Communication Arts and Sciences was also a pioneering institution that was established in 1955. Doctor Park is expected to join the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media in August.