▲ (From left) Minju Park (Alumni), Seung-Beom Ku (Ph.D. student), Kyeongho Eom (Integrated Ph.D. program student), and Professor Hyung-Min Lee

Kyeongho Eom, an Integrated Ph.D. program student from Professor Hyung-Min Lee’s BASIC Lab at Korea University School of Electrical Engineering, has been awarded the 2023 SSCS-Brain Best Paper Award, jointly hosted by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) and the IEEE Brain Initiative. The award-winning paper, authored by Eom as the first author, was presented at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2023.

The SSCS-Brain Best Paper Award, initiated in 2021, recognizes the most outstanding papers on integrated circuits related to neuroscience and brain science, selected from the five major integrated circuit conferences hosted by IEEE SSCS (ISSCC, VLSI, CICC, ESSCIRC, ASSCC). Eom's paper proposed a cutting-edge sub-retinal prosthesis chip that restores visual function for individuals with vision loss by stimulating retinal cells. The innovative design addresses critical limitations of existing retinal prosthesis chips, including stimulus scattering within the retina, limited light detection range, and poor power efficiency.

Award Title: IEEE SSCS-Brain Best Paper Award
Award-Winning Paper: A Stimulus-Scattering-Free Pixel-Sharing Sub-Retinal Prosthesis SoC with 35.8 dB Dynamic Range Time-Based Photodiode Sensing and Per-Pixel Dynamic Voltage Scaling (presented at IEEE ISSCC 2023)
Authors: Kyeongho Eom, Minju Park, Hansol Lee, Seung-Beom Ku, Namju Kim, Seongkwang Cha, Yongseok Koo, Sohee Kim, Sungwoo Kim, and Hyung-Min Lee (Advisor)

Eom's research previously garnered the Presidential Award at the 2023 Korea Semiconductor Design Contest, affirming its excellence. This latest recognition further highlights the significance of the work and its contribution to the field. A photo of the authors and their award-winning work was featured in the Fall 2024 issue of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine.