KU establishes “Graduate School of AI”, the key to the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Ministry of Science and ICT supports KU through the AI Graduate School Support Program

Korea University has become one of the first universities in Korea to establish a Department of Artificial Intelligence. It is aimed at cultivating advanced talents with world-class research capabilities and training them into becoming global leaders in the field of AI, a core technology for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, KU is recruiting new students for the integrated masters and doctorate course as well as the PhD course under the General Graduate School, starting from late 2019.

At the AI Graduate School Support Program 2019 supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT, KU’s Department of Artificial Intelligence received high marks for its advanced infrastructure and curriculum for AI studies and research, outstanding faculty members, and wide global networking experiences. For a maximum period of 10 years, KU will receive up to KRW 19 billion of government support and approximately KRW 8 billion of private funding.

The manager of this program, professor SeongWhan Lee said “Compared to the US, Europe and China, Korea lacks AI experts. Hopefully, KU’s Department of Artificial Intelligence will play an integral role in nurturing world-class experts in the AI industry and contribute to making South Korea the global leader for AI technology.”

[Introduction of KU Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence]

▶ Ministry of Science and ICT’s AI Graduate School Support Program

• Purpose of the program

- To train doctoral level talents in the AI field and support them with core technology development and in-depth academic research

• Support amount

- Up to KRW 19 billion government support for 10 years (local government and private funding not included)

▶ Aimed at becoming one of the global top 20 AI graduate schools by 2028

• Once the Graduate School is established, the AI Research Center will be founded to improve the research environment and turn it into the world’s best institute for AI studies and research.

- Research performance will be promoted and the quality of dissertations will be developed by motivating students to present dissertations at AI-related conferences or publish them through journals and designating such conditions as requirements for PhD graduation.

* All major courses will be fully conducted in English to train AI experts with global competitiveness

• The department will continually hire full-time professors with abundant AI research experience and field experts to strengthen industry-university relations.

▶ Research areas of KU Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence

• Main research fields: deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, voice recognition, big data, and neural network

• Applied or specialized fields (AI + X): health care, intelligent agent, gaming, and autonomous driving

▶ Collaboration with approximately 50 Korean and global corporations, universities and institutes

• 50 students will be recruited annually (for the integrated masters and doctorate course, and PhD course), amounting to 200 students by 2023 and 50 PhDs will graduate every year from then on.

- Academic talents: Conduct research in collaboration with the world’s most prestigious institutes (15 institutes including CMU, MIT, UC Berkeley, and the Max Planck Society), and aim at nurturing researchers for core AI technologies

- Industrial talents: Improve industry-university cooperation with Korean and global AI-related companies (38 companies including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Samsung Electronics), and motivate compulsory internship programs

* KU professors and 2 experts from the field will conduct joint-research on issues that occur at industrial fields

- Business startup talents: Promote PhD graduates to start AI-related businesses with help from KU startup support programs, and aim at creating10 business startups by 2028

• Well-organized and systematic AI courses will be provided as follows:

- 5 general courses (such as probability statistics),

- 12 basic major courses (covering core AI technologies),

- 16 intense major courses (AI + X),

- 15 industry, academy, startup related courses (such as internship and startup support programs)

* Students will be required to take core AI technology courses for the first 3 semesters and may select elective courses after the 4th semester based on their goal.

▶ Research on 4 specialized fields (AI + X): health care, intelligent agents, gaming, and autonomous driving

• Intensify research based on data from industrial field for AI + X specialized studies such as technology for explainable disease diagnosis, technology for customized agents, AI technology for cooperative multiplayer games, and AI technology for phases 4 and 5 of autonomous driving