Provided globally accredited academic achievements on Receding Horizon Control in the area of automatic control
Contributed to industrial development by fostering leading venture companies and developing software, the CEMTool
Kwon Wook-hyun
Honorary Professor, Seoul National Univ (1943~)
- Academic background
-
-
1966
B.S., College of Engineering, SNU (Electronic Engineering)
-
1972
M.S., Graduate School of the SNU (Electronic Engineering)
-
1976
Ph. D. at Brown Univ., USA (Control Engineering)
- Professional career
-
-
1977 ~ 2008
Professor at the Electronic Information Engineering Division, College of Engineering, SNU
-
1991 ~ 2008
1st President, Control and Measurement Technology Research Center, Science Foundation – SNU
-
2001
Fellow, The World Academy of Science
-
2002 ~ 2006
Vice President, Korea Engineering Academy
-
2005 ~ 2008
President, International Federation of Automatic Control
-
2010 ~ 2014
Chair-professor, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology
- Awards
-
-
1997
National Academy of Sciences Award, Korea
-
2000
Grand Prix, New Knowledge Person Award, 1st Maeil Business Newspaper
-
2007
Highest Science and Technology Person Award, Korea
Professor Wook Hyun Kwon is an engineer who was equipped with both industrial and academic capabilities and maximized value by seeking academic authority in automatic control and fostering technological ventures.
In the background of his excellent and distinguished achievements was the leadership which differentiates him from others. Firstly, he made efforts to enhance academic capabilities of research labs. He introduced a team head – team members system by research topic stressing self-discipline and teamwork. Especially, the Control and Measurement New Technology Research Center, which was established and led by him, made it possible for long-term and stable research in an organized and cooperative manner. Next, he linked the lab research to a startup. This was influenced by his deep impression of a visit to Silicon Valley during his visiting scholarship to Stanford Univ. He used to say to the graduate students, “Be a professor (researcher) or a startup entrepreneur” and stressed laboratory startups especially. This created a virtuous cycle of laboratory research and startup creation, resulting in beneficial synergies.
His representative achievement could be found in his academic superiority. He developed his research from his doctorate thesis and not just proposed the theory of Receding Horizon Control, which does make a calculation for a long distance at one time but instead, moving for short intervals and making calculations repeatedly, for the first time in the world, but also generalized so that actual application is possible. Later, this was utilized in the name of Model Predictive Control as well, and is being broadly used for the automation of machine equipment, electronics and electricity, chemical engineering, aviation, etc. He published an English book, Receding Horizon Control (Springer, 2005) with his pupils, comprising all his achievements.
Also, he proposed for the first time in the world “delay removal control” and moving interval control which changed the difficult-to-handle ‘Time-Delay System’ to the ‘Delay-free System’ and published an English book of Stabilizing and Optimizing Control for Time-Delay System: Including Model Predictive Controls (Springer, 2018) with his pupils, comprising his achievements.
Different from other professors, he advised and supported many of his graduate students to go forward for technology venture startups after graduation. This was taken after the Silicon Valley style startup infrastructure. Among the 130 masters and doctors he taught, including 55 doctors, a mass of 34 participated in venture startups. The venture companies established by them amounts to 12 and the annual sales volume (as of 2017) amounts to more than two trillion won. They are developing a new industry and providing lots of good jobs. Especially, Humax (Dae Gyu Byeon), Woori Technology (Deok Woo Kim), Fine Digital (Yong Hun Kim), Vatech (Seong Hun Lim), Topfield (Yong Cheol Lee), Piolink (Young Cheol Jo), Suprema (Jae Won Lee), etc. are leading venture enterprises that grew under his guidance.
He himself also developed a software package, CEMTool, which is for the calculation of science and technology and supported the commercialization. CEMTool, which is a coinage of the Korean word Cem which means to calculate and tul meaning a tool, was planned to counter the software of other advanced countries as a huge package for science and technology calculations. He began the development in 1990 and produced the first trial product in 1992, and, since 2000, he has produced commercial products. As he had difficulty after retirement, one of his pupils, CEO Gwang Jin Kim established CEMWare and is following up with his work. The 15 year long efforts to develop CEMTool resulted in the publication of 14 books (writing 9, editing 4, and translating 1) and greatly contributing to supporting the education and research infrastructure of universities.
Therefore, professor Kwon is a globally renowned engineering scholar who has been outstanding both in academia and industry in the area of automatic control and who took up the office of an international society. He published 20 academic books and 148 papers for SCI English journals. Google Scholar quotations reach over 13,000 times including over 1,600 times for research papers. Among the pupils from his laboratory are lots of figures who stand out in entrepreneurship. They are upgrading the industrial and social value of laboratory research by converting them into technological ventures. With this, he won the prize of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Korea, the Highest Science and Technology Person Award of Korea, and the New Knowledge Person Award of Maeil Business News. To return the benefits he received to society, he also donated 1.2 billion won of the award money plus money from his pupils.