Three POSTECH researchers were selected as the Forbes ‘30 Under 30 Asia 2019’.
POSTECH announced the news on the university website last week that Materials Science and Engineering-graduate Do-hee Keum, Kwan-Ho Yoon, and Da-Sol Lee from the Mechanical Engineering Department were selected for the category of Healthcare & Science.
▲ Three ‘30 Under 30’ honorees from POSTECH: (from left) Do-Hee Keum, Gwan-Ho Yoon and Da-Sol Lee
Forbes ‘30 Under 30 Asia’ features a diverse set of 30 honorees, with 23 countries and territories represented across the Asia-Pacific region. Applicants are vetted in 10 different categories which include arts, healthcare & science, finance & venture capital, enterprise technology, just to name a few. 30 winners are selected in each category.
Previously, Do-Hee Keum, together with POSTECH professor Sei-Kwang Hahn, developed smart contact lens technology that can diagnose diabetes. In the blink of an eye, the eyewear monitors sugar levels through blood vessels behind the eyelids, alerting the user if and when health emergencies occur. It also uses voice command to dispense medicine directly into the patient’s membrane.
Keum who received her Ph.D. at POSTECH last year is now a CEO at Bubbler, a company that works on commercializing innovative healthcare devices.
Gwan-Ho Yoon and Da-Sol Lee, together with Professor Jun-Suk Rho, successfully developed a metasurface device, an antenna that controls lightwaves.
Their devices are turning fiction into reality by providing high-resolution optical control that can’t be achieved through conventional technology. The metasurface device can help the current technologies accelerate towards improving 3D hologram displays, virtual reality and augmented reality devices.
Keum, Yoon, and Lee are certainly not the first POSTECH researchers to be listed on the Forbes ‘30 Under 30 Asia’. Altogether five people from POSTECH were selected for the last year’s list.
Computer Science & Engineering major Chan-Hoo Park and Electrical Engineering major Hyun-Sung Kim, who are co-founders of Geekble, a startup that produces new media content on science and technology were selected for the Media & Marketing & Advertising category. Computer Science & Engineering major Myung-Hoon Cha, the founder of Coinone, a fintech startup that runs one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges was chosen in the Finance & Venture Capital category. Mechanical Engineering Research Professor Hyung-Guk Jun, together with Seong-Hoon Woo, a senior research scientist at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology who studies the intrinsic spin of the electron and its magnetic moments, successfully earned a spot in the Healthcare & Science category.