Since early 2022, I've been leading several KAIST initiatives on Aritificial Intelligence adapation on Urban Science. 

Director, HcFM (2022-)

KAIST-Berekeley Global Initiatives on Human-centered Future Mobility 

Joint efforts between KAIST, UC Berkeley and industry leaders focusing on social and human impact of future mobility including autonomous driving, urban air mobility and AI ethics 

Director, KN-C3 (2023-)

KAIST-NYU Center for Cities and Climate Change 

Joint efforts between KAIST and NYU to develop global research and education program with focus on urban sustainability

Lead, KUSI (2022-)

KAIST Urban Science Initiatives (KUSI) 

Campus-wide task force to develop cross-disciplinary research and education program on computational urban science 

My research project porfolio includes traffic optimization, road safety, topological data science, UTM, urban big data,  AI mobility, system safety, disaster management, warehouse robot system, and EEG-based workload analysis. It might seem quite diverse, but they all deal with computational solutions for systems-of-systems.

Principal Investigator, Deep Traffic, a NRF Basic Research Lab on Attention based Graph Neural Network Models for Urban Mobility Network Analysis and Prediction (https://deeptraffic.kaist.ac.kr)

Budget: $1.5M, National Research Foundation, 2021.05~2024.02

National Research Foundation’s Basic Research Lab on Future Urban Mobility. The lab focuses on application of GNN and Attention Mechanism (transformer) to urban mobility network, both structural and abstract. ETA, routing, rebalancing, and pattern mining are the key areas of focus. 

Principal Investigator, Big data application for topological transportation network analysis     

Budget: ~$500,000, National Research Foundation Mid-career Grant, 2019.11~2023.03

Principal Investigator, Korean small UAV Traffic Management (K-UTM), Task 3          

Budget: ~$2,600,000, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, 2017.05~2021.12

The project aims to establish a robust and effective UAV Traffic Management (UTM) techniques and policies in response to rapid adoption of sUAV for public and private purpose. Task 3 focus includes three dimensional airspace structure design, and optimal flow management in urban area. The research is conducted in collaboration with multiple international partners including NASA UTM division and NTU UTM research center. 

Principal Investigator, Big data application for topological transportation network analysis     

Budget: ~$400,000, National Research Foundation, 2017.11~2020.03

Research on topological network analysis both on the surface and air traffic under active control. Main focus is to analyze the transportation network properties incorporating both topological and semantic data for optimal control of future autonomous vehicles.

Principal Investigator, R&D Planning for Aviation Information and Big Data Analytics for Safety 

Budget: ~$70,000, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, 2017.08~2018.08

Following the ICAO’s newly enforced mandate to adopt data-driven risk assessment for Safety Management System (SMS), the Korean government is planning to establish Aviation Big Data Center in 2019. In preparation, research and development scope and requirements are defined based on preliminary big data analysis of aviation sector.

Principal Investigator, Traffic safety big data analysis                                                                   

Budget: ~$150,000, National Research Foundation, 2014.05~2017.04

Utilizes transportation big data set including speed, road geometry and collision records to identify hot spot and black spot.

Principal Investigator, Aviation Safety Management System for Service Providers, Task 2

Budget: ~$1,200,000, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, 2011.08~2014.08

Developing scientific risk assessment methodology for safety management system of airlines. Several risk assessment methods based on system safety principles were developed. The patented system is currently being used by Jeju Air, the largest low-cost carrier in South Korea.

Principal Investigator, Air Traffic Flow Management under Airspace Uncertainty                     

Budget: ~$140,000, National Research Foundation, 2011.05~2014.04

Research on traffic flow management in the next generation air transportation system with focus on stochastic route optimization under free flight scenario.

Co-investigator, Autonomous Vehicle National R&D Phase II                                                     

Budget: ~$300,000, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, 2017.05~2020.12

Big data analysis of human physiological data collected as well as vehicle operational data in preparation for SAE level III and IV. Various Machine Learning techniques are investigated and applied to define driver readiness under autonomous driving environment. Principal investigator is Dr. D.S. Yoon (ETRI).

Co-investigator, Korea RPAS Research Project                                                                               

Budget: ~$220,000, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, 2015.05~2017.05

The project investigates the operational concepts and requirement for seamless integration of larger UAV in controlled airspace. My research focus was drone traffic management in lower altitude. Principal Investigator is Prof. H.C. Shim (KAIST).

Co-investigator, Navigational Robot for Intelligent Warehouse                                                   

Budget: ~$250,000, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, 2014.05~2016.05

The goal is to develop Amazon’s KIVA-like navigation robot for large-scale deployment in CJ warehouses. Research focus was on robot traffic management and control optimization. Principal investigator is Dr. C.W. Park (KETI)