Future-Transforming AI Adventure Beyond Technology

The Department of Artificial Intelligence solves real-world problems through various convergences

The future is already here. We live in an age where countless data flows and smart devices dominate our lives. Today, artificial intelligence is at the center of all that change. Recently, artificial intelligence technology has been advancing at an unprecedented rate, revolutionizing human life and entire industries. At the center of this paradigm shift is the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a key driver of the future society, with an emphasis on the responsibilities and roles of higher education institutions along these lines.

Our university took the initiative to establish the Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence in 2019 to foster advanced talent at the master's and doctoral levels. In 2021, we established the undergraduate Department of Artificial Intelligence, and completed the AI talent training system that encompasses both undergraduate and graduate levels. The Department of Artificial Intelligence is becoming a "laboratory of thought" for creating a smarter, more innovative, and more humane world. Our world-class faculty and bright minds are exploring the endless possibilities of artificial intelligence and shaping the future together.

Chair Baek Jongduk, Professor No Albert, and Professor Hwang Seong Jae founded the Department of Artificial Intelligence, which goes beyond learning AI technology to finding and solving problems in the world to create a better future.

Q. There is a lot of interest in AI in all areas, and I think the Department of Artificial Intelligence is the heart of future talent development. We are now in our fifth year of having an undergraduate Department of Artificial Intelligence at our university. Tell us about the department's founding purpose and current disciplines.

The Department of Artificial Intelligence was established to train the next generation of talent to lead the rapidly advancing field of AI. The goal is not simply to use technology but to cultivate talent that would possess both the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to fundamentally understand the principles and structure of AI and creatively apply it to various fields.

Currently, the department is under the School of Computing, which is part of the College of Computing. Students enter the first year through integrated recruitment, and when they advance to the second year, they choose their majors from the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Artificial Intelligence, and the Department of Artificial Intelligence Systems depending on their aptitude and career path.


Q. What kind of teaching and research is done in the Department of Artificial Intelligence?

The Department of Artificial Intelligence is not just about learning AI technology but also about teaching and research that delves deeply into how AI works. What are its limitations and how can they be addressed to improve and develop AI? To achieve these goals, the department runs two specialized programs, LE.A.P. and MESH.

The LE.A.P program aims to understand and advance the core technologies of AI from ground up, and the name is an acronym for Learning, Architecture, and Perception. The Learning area covers technologies that help AI learn and better adapt. For example, we study how it learns to understand explanations or make fewer mistakes like a human. The Architecture area involves designing hardware and system structures that allow AI to run quickly and efficiently, including lightweighting techniques that allow it to operate on small devices or robots. The Perception area is where we develop an AI that has the ability to understand language, analyze images, and recognize sounds like humans do, including natural language processing, speech recognition, and computer vision. There are approximately 30+ core courses centered around these three areas, balancing theory and practice.

The MESH program is an education and research program that integrates AI into various disciplines and industries. The idea is that AI does not stand alone but can be combined with other disciplines such as medicine, engineering, finance, and the humanities to create greater values. In the medical field, Yonsei Medical Center's vast medical data are utilized to conduct research to help predict or diagnose patient conditions and collaborate with hospitals and domestic and international medical companies. In the engineering field, we study AI for future industrial technologies such as autonomous driving, smart factories, and robotics. In addition, we offer collaborative projects and internships with companies. In the finance and management field, we apply AI to financial data analysis, AI-based investment strategies, and corporate management innovation. We also collaborate with global financial companies and run startup support programs. In the field of humanities and law, we conduct research on the social impact of AI, including ethics, law, and policy. We are particularly committed to developing technologies that can contribute to the improvement of socially disadvantaged people and public services.

Thus, the Department of Artificial Intelligence aims to go beyond technology-centered education to foster talented students who can solve real-world problems and fulfill their social responsibilities through convergence with various fields.


Q. What are the curriculum and the different majors for students? I'm curious about the curriculum of the Department of Artificial Intelligence compared to the curriculum of the traditional Department of Computer Science.

The undergraduate curriculum in the Department of Artificial Intelligence is designed to lay the foundation in programming, mathematics, and statistics in years 1-2. In years 3-4, it focuses on core AI technologies and applications including machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, large language models, and multimodal deep learning. Compared to traditional computer science majors, the program is characterized by a higher proportion of AI-specific courses, providing students with a deeper understanding of the principles and applications of AI.

There are three micro-majors offered by the Department of Artificial Intelligence. The micro-majors aim to develop convergence skills by combining AI with management. The AI and Management Information Systems major enhances data-driven decision-making and digital transformation capabilities; the AI and Management Science major fuses core AI theories with quantitative methodologies to develop practical problem-solving skills; and the Marketing and AI major develops expertise in data-driven marketing, including consumer analytics and personalization strategies.

'Demand-driven AI-Centered Education (DAICE)' is an AI-centered convergence education program that evolved from the traditional Convergence Concentration Major. It is designed for students of all majors to develop AI+X competencies by combining AI core courses with their majors. We take students from the fundamentals to the applications of AI programming, deep learning, data science, natural language processing, and more. They can develop real-world problem-solving skills through project-based classes that reflect the latest research and opportunities to engage in research. Upon graduation, the degree is labeled as "major name + AI Convergence Specialization" to help students develop into convergence talents with AI literacy and data utilization skills.


Q. Tell us about your graduate program.

The Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence is participating in the National Graduate School of AI project and in the fourth phase BK21 General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) Innovation Talent Education Research Center. It is conducting large-scale convergent research and in-depth education aimed at fostering the next generation of AGI research talent. In particular, we aim to secure world-class competitiveness in Interactive AGI, AI+X convergence, multimodal foundation models, and specialized medical-robotics. Our vision is to enter the top 20 global AI education research centers within 10 years. We cover four core areas- education, research, industry-academia collaboration, and internationalization–– and 13 strategic tasks, ranging from common basic courses to specialized courses in multimodal foundation models, medical AI, and robot AI, beginner foundation tracks, cutting-edge research seminars, AI+X convergence, and entrepreneurship courses. Students can systematically study advanced areas such as multimodal data integration, large language models, medical image analysis, cloud-based healthcare systems, robot learning and vision, and autonomous driving, applying their research results to real-world problems through hands-on projects. This curriculum provides students from diverse backgrounds with AGI research capabilities that span from fundamentals to cutting-edge applications and prepares them to be competitive in both academic and industrial settings.


Q. Many universities are starting to specialize in AI. What are some of the characteristics or strengths of the Department of Artificial Intelligence at our university?

While AI departments are rapidly emerging across the country, ours is unique in that the depth and direction of our education and research have been clearly set since its inception. Our university has already started to cultivate advanced talents at the master's and doctoral levels by establishing the Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence in 2019 as the leading university in Korea, followed by the establishment of the undergraduate Department of Artificial Intelligence in 2021, completing the undergraduate-graduate AI talent cultivation system.

The Department of Artificial Intelligence has been operating at the Sinchon Campus since 2022 with a first-year class of 20 students. With the recent net increase in the departments of advanced studies, the Department of Artificial Intelligence will enroll 58 students in 2024 with the goal of fostering world-class AI experts. Our department's greatest strength is the balance of theory-rich foundational training and practical training covering the latest technologies. The students will build a solid foundation in computer programming, math, statistics, and algorithms, while diving deep into cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, big data, computer vision, natural language processing, and robotics.

In addition, utilizing the advantage of being the largest university in South Korea, we are actively operating convergence education that combines AI with various majors such as medicine, management, humanities, and engineering. The Department of Artificial Intelligence is at the center of this convergence, serving as a hub for leading AI education and research across the university, which is an important distinction from other universities.


Q. Tell us about the members, current status, and recent accomplishments of your department.

The Department of Artificial Intelligence currently has 11 full-time faculty members, many of whom are young, recently hired professors, who are actively engaged in research and teaching. Our department is home to 97 undergraduate and 235 graduate students, many of whom are international, creating an international learning environment. The university offers more than 60 undergraduate and 50 graduate courses, with a balanced curriculum ranging from basic to advanced and applied.

A recent achievement is that the Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence was selected as a fourth phase BK21 Innovative Talent Education Research Center for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), conducting world-class research in various fields such as multimodal foundation models, medical AI, robotic AI, and AI+X convergence. In addition, Professor Lee Young-Woon received the Best Conference Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in May 2024; Professor Yoo Youngjae, Lee Dongha, and Yeo Jin-Young received the Outstanding Paper Award at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in August 2024; and Professor Hwang Seong Jae received the Highlight Paper at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in June 2024. These awards and the makeup of the department demonstrate that despite its short history, it is growing rapidly and is laying a solid foundation to provide students with cutting-edge research and international collaboration opportunities.


Q. As chair of the department, you are working on medical AI, and I am curious about how AI is being applied in the medical field.

The applications of AI in medicine are endless. In the field of radiology, which is my main research area, radiologists need to check and verify numerous patient data to make an imaging diagnosis. Using AI technology can dramatically reduce the time required for imaging diagnosis and improve diagnostic accuracy. In the past, medical charting of patient data was done manually and took a long time, but now AI technology can draft medical charts on the fly, improving the overall workflow of the medical practice and increasing efficiency. In this capacity, AI is being utilized in many areas of healthcare.


Q. How does the education of AI convergence with other majors look like? I'm also curious about the students' overall reaction and satisfaction with AI convergence education.

As mentioned earlier, AI convergence education is systematically operated around the Demand-driven AI-Centered Education (DAICE) program. DAICE is an interdisciplinary course designed to help students from a variety of academic backgrounds learn AI in a step-by-step manner, from fundamentals to advanced applications and apply it to their own fields of study. In the Foundations track, students learn basic AI concepts and skills through courses such as AI Programming, Introduction to Deep Learning and Applications, and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Applications. Then, they expand into project-based courses allowing them to combine AI with their major or area of interest. This provides students with experience not only in AI model development but also in data processing, problem definition, and application design.

Building on this foundation, AI+X convergence education aims to combine AI with a variety of disciplines, including medicine, engineering, finance, the humanities, and social sciences, to solve real-world industrial and research problems. For example, in the medical field, we work with Yonsei Medical Center to develop diagnostic support AI and medical image analysis systems. In the engineering field, we design autonomous driving, robot control, and smart manufacturing systems. In the finance field, we develop data-driven risk analysis and investment decision models. In the field of humanities and social sciences, they conduct research in AI ethics, law and policy, and social problem-solving AI.

The responses from students have been highly positive. Many students find that applying AI directly to solving problems in their field of study is a great way to improve their practical skills and employability. For AI students, the experience of collaborating with students from various majors has helped them develop their creative problem-solving skills. Also, it has helped some students expand their career paths by leading them to pursue interdisciplinary majors, double majors, or graduate school.


Q. Will this be the first class to graduate from the Department of Artificial Intelligence? What are the main career paths for the graduates from the Department of Artificial Intelligence?

After the first semester of 2025, the first (early) graduates of the Department of Artificial Intelligence will obtain their degree (ceremony in August). On June 4, fourth-year students in the Department of Artificial Intelligence held their first joint graduation exhibition with the Department of Computer Science. Although this is an annual tradition for the Department of Computer Science, it is a historic first step for the Department of Artificial Intelligence, showcasing student research and projects to the world.

We anticipate two main paths for our graduates. One is to continue research in cutting-edge fields such as machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing based on the expertise acquired in undergraduate studies. The other is to enter various industries such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and robotics, including domestic and foreign IT giants, global big tech companies, and AI startups, fueled by the recent increase in demand for AI. We expect our graduates to be ready-to-go, hands-on workers who can be employed in any industry.


Q. Which students should choose AI as a major?

Majoring in AI is more than just learning programming skills; it is about developing the ability to analyze and creatively solve problems. This makes it a great fit for students who are excited about learning new skills and concepts, have strengths in logical and math thinking, and enjoy the process of solving complex problems step-by-step. AI can also converge with a wide range of fields, including healthcare, finance, engineering, and the humanities, making it a great choice for students who want to view the world from a broader perspective rather than limit themselves to one field.

My message to prospective students is that AI is a key technology that is rapidly evolving and will transform our lives and industries in the future. The Department of Artificial Intelligence at Yonsei University offers a curriculum that balances theory and practice and develops practical competencies required in industry and research. If you knock on a door with curiosity and a sense of challenge, you are on your way to becoming one of the AI experts of the future. Your future-changing AI adventure awaits at Yonsei University's Department of Artificial Intelligence!

"New value is born from a deeper understanding of existing knowledge. You will create new values that will benefit many people through exploring and applying new technologies based on a deep understanding of AI."
Professor Baek Jongduk / Chair of the Department of Artificial Intelligence

"The Department of Artificial Intelligence provides in-depth theoretical training that goes beyond just using technology to fundamentally understand the principles and structure of artificial intelligence. Based on the core theories of AI, such as mathematics, statistics, probability, optimization, and algorithms, you will develop a deep understanding of AI and the power to think for yourself through the process of implementing and analyzing various models."
Prof. No Albert / Department of Artificial Intelligence

"AI is now an interdisciplinary technology that is creating new possibilities in many fields, including medicine, science, art, and social issues. In this wave of change, the Department of Artificial Intelligence cultivates the ability to deeply understand the principles of AI and based on this understanding, lead the future.”
Prof. Hwang Seong Jae / Department of Artificial Intelligence

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