The department of computer science and engineering at Postech reported a series of recent achievements across research, education, and community building. The department’s optimization research lab, advised by professor Namhoon Lee, received the Korea South-East Power Best Paper Award at the “2025 Korean Artificial Intelligence Society Fall Conference” held at COEX in Seoul on Nov. 20th. The winning paper, “The Unseen Frontier: Pushing the Limits of LLM Sparsity with Surrogate-Free ADMM,” introduced a new optimization technique for large-scale language model sparsification and was recognized as one of only two Best Paper Award recipients among this year’s selections.
The sparsification work proposed a constrained optimization technique based on an objective function and showed through theory and experiments that the method outperforms existing approaches. In particular, in a 90% sparsification experiment targeting the LLaMA-2-7B model, they confirmed 7.8 times lower perplexity, approximately 2.5 times faster inference speed, and 4.6 times higher memory compression ratio compared to existing approaches, suggesting the possibility of reducing large language model operating costs and improving efficiency. The lab has also accumulated honors including the Outstanding Paper Award at the 2025 summer conference of the Korean Artificial Intelligence Society and the Best Paper Award at the 2023 fall conference, underscoring its strength in optimization and theory-driven model efficiency. Separately, the department held the 2025 fall semester project research presentation on Dec. 12th in Turing Hall, where 24 selected presenters from Research ProjectⅠ I and Research ProjectⅡ courses showcased posters and demonstrations, and one grand prize and two excellence awards were later conferred in a Dec. 15th ceremony.
Individual students also distinguished themselves in national and international arenas. Je Tae-ho, an undergraduate in the class of 20, won the grand prize (1st place) at the “AI TOP 100” competition held at the Kakao Artificial Intelligence Campus on Saturday, November 22nd, after placing 2nd out of 3,000 in the preliminary round. The contest evaluated participants on their ability to solve practical problems using Artificial Intelligence tools, including writing a handover document from large datasets, interpreting complex rule-based passwords, and implementing a Gomoku Artificial Intelligence model, with a rule that awarded bonus points for faster solutions, and Je secured victory by submitting more than All of the problems within an hour and a half of the competition’s start. Another student, Sangyoon Kim (class of 19 and CEO of Snapscale Inc.), won the grand prize at the “2025 Chung Ju-yung Startup Competition” with “Simula.ai,” a manufacturing-specific generative Artificial Intelligence solution that automates complex process design for EPC companies and was praised for improving work efficiency and cost reduction.
Faculty and labs received recognition for both research impact and lab culture. Professor Hee-Kap Ahn earned the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Award for his software R&D, centered on the SW Star Lab project “Development of Optimal Data Structures and Application Algorithms in Dynamic Geometric Environments,” which developed algorithms and data structures for real-time processing of high-dimensional, changing data and secured core source technologies for applications including Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision. The medical information processing lab (MIP), led by professors Wonhwa Kim and Ilwoo Lyu, was selected as a “2025 POSTECH Healthy Lab” in a program that chose 10 labs out of 136, with professor Kim’s lab taking 2nd place All (Excellence Award) and professor Lyu’s lab taking 6th place (Encouragement Award) based on healthy lab scale evaluations and human rights training metrics. In systems research, student Woochang Jeong (integrated 19, advised by professor Chanik Park) won the “IEEE Outstanding Paper Award” at “The 8th IEEE International Conference on Blockchain 2025” in Zhengzhou, China, for work on a directed acyclic graph-based Byzantine-tolerant consensus system that mitigates node delays to improve throughput and latency, further validating the department’s international competitiveness.
Beyond research and awards, the department emphasized community building and recognition. It hosted the first “Computer Engineers’ Night” on Thursday, Nov. 27th at the POSCO International Center, attracting approximately 150 participants including professors, students, and staff for a black and red themed year-end event with a barbecue dinner, performances, activities, and an awards ceremony, which department head professor Seungmoon Choi described as strengthening solidarity and aiming to become a core annual event. Across these updates, Postech’s school of electrical engineering and computer science highlighted a growing ecosystem that spans cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence research, high-profile student competitions, entrepreneurial success, healthy lab initiatives, and international honors in areas such as blockchain and dynamic geometric algorithms.
