[Paper chosen as top paper among 120 submissions across ICT disciplines]

POSTECH PhD candidates Youwang Kim (Department of Electrical Engineering) and Ji-Yeon Kim (Department of Convergence IT Engineering, advisor: Professor Tae-Hyun Oh from the Department of Electrical Engineering) recently received the Grand Prize (Minister of Science and ICT Award) at the 15th ICT Paper Competition.

The competition focuses on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), a pivotal technology in various sectors including education, healthcare, and research in modern society.

In their research of text-based generation of realistic 4D human avatars, Youwang Kim and Ji-Yeon Kim introduce an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to create lifelike 4D human avatars solely through text input, eliminating the need for training data. The system interprets descriptions of user behavior and appearance to generate realistic 4D human avatars. Among 120 submissions to the competition, their work garnered the highest scores for creativity, originality, technical practicality, and more.

This research contributes to advancing metaverse technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Considered a practical and groundbreaking technology, it has the potential to assist professional graphic artists in the actual design process.

Youwang Kim expressed his aspiration by stating, “Building upon our research in 4D human avatar generation, our ongoing efforts will focus on achieving faster production of higher quality virtual human avatars.”

The competition, with the goal of fostering research in the ICT field, was jointly organized by the Electronic Times Internet, Webcash Group, and the Korea Software Financial Cooperative. With a total of 120 submissions spanning various ICT domains including software, IoT, artificial intelligence, cloud, and semiconductors, the first-place honors went to a research team from the POSTECH. As a reward, the team received both a prize and 15 million won (USD 11,000) in scholarships.