Two undergraduate students (Left: Min Ji Kim, Right: Ara Cho) will spend the next eight weeks (January - February, 2018) at CCADD, working as a team through the winter internship program at the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University. Min Ji will graduate in February 2018 with a bachelor's degree in Bioscience and Biotechnology at Hankuk Univeristy of Foreign Studies. Ara is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the School of Biotechnology and Environmental Engineering, Catholic University of Korea with a major in Life Science.

This intensive research internship program aims to provide student interns with hands-on research experience in drug development and regulatory sciences, helping them further build their academic achievements. Min Ji and Ara will delve deeply into various aspects of new drug development. Please join us to welcome Min Ji and Ara! 

CSCST has published a new calendar for 2018, which contained a brief introduction of all the laboratories and centers in the school. The next year's theme is a parody of a movie. CCADD took a Korean movie entitled "My Little Brother", which is a story about a boy who was unknown and appeared suddenly to a family an unemployed biggest brother, a penniless second sister, and pretty but talent-less younger sister. The boy called himself as a new youngest brother, and he actually was. The movie ended happily with everyone recognizing the endless value of family. The school graciously assigned the first month to CCADD! 

Dr. Jeong-An Gim has joined CCADD on December 1 as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University. Prior to joining CCADD, Dr. Gim was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Life Sciences Department, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (2017), where he played an important role in the Ulsan 10K genome project. Dr. Gim received his master's and doctoral degrees from Pusan National University. 

Having a strong background in biological science, Dr. Gim's current research interests include combining advanced computer science technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence with genomics and bioinformatics. Dr. Howard Lee, Director to CCADD, welcomed Dr. Gim, saying "With his vast research experience and numerous skill sets in genomics, Dr. Gim will certainly add another layer of opportunities to the existing research capabilities of CCADD." More details about Dr. Gim's past experience and research interests can be found here. 

Dr. Soohyun Kim was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University. She received her PhD in statistics at Arizona State Univeristy in the United States. Previously, Dr. Kim studied communications at Iowa State University for one year. She also worked as an editor of Hankyoreh21, a printed news magazine, and an account executive at advertising agencies in South Korea. Dr. Kim earned her BS degree in engineering (major: architecture) at Seoul National University. Dr. Kim is now a Postdoctoral Researcher at Spatial Computing for Sustainable Infrastructure laboratory (SCSI lab), Yonsei University.

Dr. Yuchae Jung wrote an article in BRIC View on Nov 20 2017 about AI techonology for the improvement of clinical trial process. In this article, Dr. Jung introduced several examples of global pharmaceutical companies that have successfully applied AI technology to drug development and clinical studies. She also added that AI technology can be used in various fields of drug development such as simulation of drug-drug interaction, drug screening, patient recruitment, and data collection from biosensors. Dr. Jung concluded the article by emphasizing the potential of AI technology in streamlining drug development processes. Dr. Jung's article can be downloaded here.

Dr. Yuchae Jung introduced the concept of P-MATCH or Precision Machine Learning AssisTed Clinical Trial Eligibility Assessment using Hospital Records at the 5^th Joint Conference on Medical Device between Seoul National University Colleges of Medicine and Engineering and Seoul National University Hospital on November 3, 2017. The title of her talk was 'Application of Artificial Intelligence Technology for Efficient Clinical Trials'. Dr. Jung underlined why artificial intelligence, mainly deep machine learning, can and should be adopted to bring more efficiency to clinical trials, particularly for precise patient enrollment, which allows for patients who are likely to respond to a treatment under testing to have a bigger chance of enrollment. This will also make clinical trials more productive and error-free, Dr. Jung added, because all of the eligibility assessment procedures are algorithm-based using the electronic medical record (EMR). 

Dr. Jung's talk was well received, and there were a couple of questions as to what could make P-MATCH different from other approaches such as the IBM Watson for Oncology. Dr. Jung replied that the biggest difference is P-MATCH's natural language processing capability of more than one language (i.e., Korean and English), which often are used in EMR in a haphazard and inconsistent manner. 

For anyone who wants to learn more about Dr. Jung's presentation, please contact her. 

The Convergence Story, a periodical news letter published by the Graduate School of Convergence and Science Technology (GCST) at Seoul National University, interviewed Dr. Yuchae Jung on Sep 21 2017 about her past research experience and accomplishments, new research interests, and future plans. In the interview, Dr. Jung emphasized the application of artificial intelligence technology to streamline clinical drug development, particularly for efficient patient enrollment using machine learning algorithms based on the electronic medical record (EMR). More details about Dr. Jung's interview can be found at News letter.