Theme: Innovation and Risks

In collaboration with TEDx, KFAS is inviting twelve world-leading scientists to host the second TEDxKFAS event on Aug. 9, 2018 at the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies’ (KFAS) headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul.

The general theme for TEDxKFAS 2018 is “Innovation and Risks,” and each speaker will be giving an insightful talk on the following three topics: “Human Brain vs. AI”, “Seeing the Unseen”, and “Guardians of Life.”

As leading experts in their respective fields, these distinguished scholars will share with us innovative ideas that we hope will help make the future a better place for humanity – and the environment.

TEDxKFAS 2018
Conference Hall, Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, Teheran-ro 211, Gangnam-gu
Seoul, Seoul Teugbyeolsi, 06141
South Korea

Dae-Hyeong Kim

Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University and Associate Director of Center for Nanoparticle Research at Institute for Basic Science

Dae-Hyeong Kim obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2000 and 2002, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. From 2009 to 2011, he was a post-doctoral research associate at University of Illinois. He joined Seoul National University in 2011 and is currently an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering of Seoul National University. He has published more than 90 papers and 25 international and domestic patents. He has been recognized with several awards including George Smith Award (2009), MRS Graduate Student Award (2009), Green Photonics Award (2011), TR 35 award (2011), Hong Jin-ki Creative Award (2015), SCEJ Award (2016), and Young Scientist Award (2017).

Daeyeol Lee

Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine

Daeyeol Lee studied economics at Seoul National University and received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota, he held faculty positions at Wake Forest University and University of Rochester before joining the Department of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine in 2006. He pioneered the neuroeconomics field, and made important discoveries about the prefrontal cortex function related to reinforcement learning. His interests include behavioral economics, time perception, numerical reasoning, computational psychiatry related to addiction and impulsivity, artificial intelligence, and evolution of intelligence. He published numerous articles in leading journals, including Science, Nature, and Neuron. He is a member of the editorial board in eLife and the steering committee of Kavli Institute for Neuroscience. He is the author of Birth of Intelligence, and a co-founder of Neurogazer.

Han Woong Yeom

Professor of Physics at POSTECH and Director of Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems at Institute for Basic Science

Han Woong Yeom is Director of Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems of Institute for Basic Science and Physics professor at POSTECH. From 1993, he has studied the structures and electronic properties of atomic wires and atomic layers self-organized on semiconductor surfaces, which led to the discovery of a series of metal-insulator transitions and topological excitations such as chiral solitons. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He received numerous awards including Korea Science Award (2015), Inchon Award for Science (2016), and KyungAm Award for Science (2017). He is now serving as the vice chair of Presidential Advisory Council of Science of Technology of Korea.

Hongkun Park

Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor of Physics, Harvard University

Hongkun Park is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a member of the Harvard Center for Brain Science and Harvard Quantum Optics Center. He serves as an associate editor of Nano Letters. His research interests lie in exploring solid-state photonic, optoelectronic, and plasmonic devices for quantum information processing as well as developing new nano- and microelectronic interfaces for living cells, cell networks, and organisms. Awards and honors that he received include the Ho-Am Foundation Prize in Science, NIH Director's Pioneer Award, and the US Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

Jin Hyung Lee

Associate Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Bioengineering at Stanford University

Jin Hyung Lee received her Bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University and Masters and Doctoral degrees from Stanford University, all in Electrical Engineering. She is a recipient of the 2008 NIH/NIBIB K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, 2010 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 2010 Okawa Foundation Research Grant Award, 2011 NSF CAREER Award, 2012 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, 2012 Epilepsy Therapy Project award, 2013 Alzheimer’s Association New Investigator Award, 2014 IEEE EMBS BRAIN young investigator award, 2017 NIH/NIMH BRAIN grant award, and 2018 Lina 50+ Award Grand Prize. As an Electrical Engineer by training with Neuroscience research interest, her goal is to analyze, debug, and engineer the brain circuit through innovative technology.

Jiwoong Park

Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago

Jiwoong Park is a chemist and nanotechnologist at the University of Chicago, where he has been a Professor of Chemistry and of the Institute of Molecular Engineering since 2016. He finished his undergraduate degree in physics at Seoul National University in 1996 and received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. After three years of an independent postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Rowland Institute, he led his research group as a faculty member in chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University from 2006 to 2016. He has received the NSF CAREER award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. He has published over 70 papers to date with 13 papers in Nature and Science. Park serves as an associate editor for the journal Nano Letters.

Kwanghun Chung

Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kwanghun Chung is currently an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, as well as a core member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. He is also a core member of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2005, his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2009, and his postdoctoral training at Stanford. Since 2013, he has been leading an interdisciplinary team at MIT to develop and apply novel technologies for a holistic understanding of large-scale complex biological systems. Chung was the recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award 2016, the McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award 2016, the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering Award 2015, the NARSAD Young Investigator Award 2015, the Yumin Awards for Creativity 2014, the Searle Scholars Award 2014, and the BWF Career Award at the Scientific Interface 2012.

Marvin Chun

Dean of Yale College, the Richard M. Colgate Professor of Psychology and Professor of Neuroscience

Marvin Chun leads a cognitive neuroscience laboratory that uses brain imaging and machine learning to study how people see, attend, remember, and perform optimally. One line of work uses brain imaging to read out perceptions and thoughts. From brain scans, another project reveals and predicts what makes people different. He received his Ph.D. from MIT and his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. His research has been honored with several early-mid career awards, such as the Troland Research Award from the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology. His undergraduate teaching of Introduction to Psychology, one of the largest classes in Yale College, has been recognized with both the Phi Beta Kappa William Clyde DeVane Medal for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching, and the Lex Hixon '63 Prize for Teaching Excellence.

Mingoo Seok

Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University

Mingoo Seok is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. He received the B.S. with summa cum laude from Seoul National University in 2005, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in 2007 and 2011, respectively, all in electrical ngineering. He is an expert in low-power VLSI circuits and architecture design. He has been a technical committee member in IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and several other conferences. He has been as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I (TCAS-I), IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems (TVLSI) and for IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letter (SSCL). He is an IEEE senior member. He won NSF CAREER award in 2015.

Sunghoon Kwon

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seoul National University

Sunghoon Kwon is a professor of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seoul National University. He received his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1998), M.S. in Biomedical Engineering (2000) from Seoul National University, and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley (2004). He received many prestigious awards including the 2011 KAST Young Scientist Award, the 2012 Presidential Young Scientist Award, the 2016 IEEK/IEEE IT Young Engineer Award, and the 2018 NAEK Young Engineer Award. He is also founder and CEO of Quanta Matrix Inc., a company that develops microfluidic-based rapid antibiotic susceptibility test. His research interest is to develop diagnostic and therapeutic technologies for personalized medicine.

Taeghwan Hyeon

Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University and Director of Center for Nanoparticle Research at Institute for Basic Science

Taeghwan Hyeon is a SNU Distinguished Professor at School of Chemical and Biological Engineering of Seoul National University, and also Director of Center for Nanoparticle Research of Institute for Basic Science. Over the last 20 years, he has studied the synthesis and biomedical applications of uniformly sized nanoparticles, for which he was listed on the Top 100 Chemists of the Decade by UNESCO&IUPAC (2011). Since 2010, he has served as an Associate Editor of Journal of the American Chemical Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Materials Research Society. He received numerous awards including IUVSTA Prize for Technology (2016), Korea S&T Award (2016), Hoam Prize (2012), and POSCO-TJ Park Award (2008).

Taekjip Ha

Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Physics and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, HHMI Investigator

Taekjip Ha is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He uses sophisticated physical techniques to manipulate and visualize the movements of single molecules to understand basic biological processes involving protein–nucleic acid and protein-protein complexes and the mechanical regulation of their functions. He received his B.S. in Physics from Seoul National University in 1990 and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1996. After postdoctoral training at Stanford, he was a Physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until 2015. He is a member of Editorial Boards for Science, Cell, eLife, Structure, Annual Review of Biophysics and Nucleic Acids Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 2011 HoAm Prize in Science.