▲ (From left) Seongcheol Kim, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Semiconductor System Engineering, and Jincheol Shim, an integrated master's and doctoral student in the School of Electrical Engineering (Advisor: Professor Chulwoo Kim)

A research team led by Professor Chulwoo Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering at Korea University demonstrated the university's academic excellence once again by winning both a Gold Award and a Bronze Award at the '30th Samsung Human-Tech Paper Award' ceremony held on February 7.

Jincheol Shim, an integrated master's and doctoral student in the School of Electrical Engineering, and Seongcheol Kim, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Semiconductor System Engineering (Advisor: Professor Chulwoo Kim), were recognized for their outstanding research in the circuit design category, receiving the Gold Award and the Bronze Award, respectively.

Jincheol Shim was awarded the Gold Award for his research on a '50-Gb/s PAM-4 transceiver for short-range communication,' where he proposed various techniques, such as a dual-type differential transmitter circuit and an integrator-based clock recovery circuit, overcoming the limitations of supply voltage. His work presented high-performance, ultra-fast interface circuit design methods for next-generation system semiconductors.

Seongcheol Kim received the Bronze Award for his paper on 'PAM-4 data bus inversion technology for memory interfaces.' His research proposed an encoding technique and process variation compensation circuit that mitigates power consumption and noise in next-generation memory semiconductors, contributing to improved yield in memory semiconductor manufacturing.

Jincheol Shim, the first Korea University student to win the Gold Award at the Samsung Human-Tech Paper Award, expressed his gratitude, saying, "I am honored to receive an award that aligns with Korea University's tradition, and I am thankful for the guidance of my advisor, which enabled this achievement." Seongcheol Kim, who won the Bronze Award, remarked, "I am happy to be able to repay the generous support given to my research."

Both students expressed their aspirations, stating, "We will continue to strive to become leading semiconductor design engineers representing Korea and contributing to the advancement of the national industry on the global stage."

The Samsung Human-Tech Paper Award, celebrating its 30th year, has been held annually by Samsung Electronics since 1994 to discover and nurture talented individuals in the field of science and technology. This year, a total of 1,189 papers were submitted, with 115 selected for awards.