AI Challenge Grand Prize Winner Lim Minhyuk: "I Hope to Help the Future of the Baby to Be Born"

Interview with Lim Minhyuk, Grand Prize Winner of KT's 'Post-Corona AI Challenge'

At the KT 'Post-Corona AI Challenge' contest, Minhyuk Lim (second from the left), who won the grand prize for 'Influx Prediction Algorithm Modeling,' is taking a commemorative photo with Hongbeom Jeon, Vice President of KT (from the left), Kyungman Kim, Director of AI-Based Policy Division at the Ministry of Science and ICT, and Seongtak Oh, Head of the Intelligent Data Division at the National Information Society Agency. The award ceremony was held online on the 24th.

[Asia Economy Reporter Koo Chae-eun] "A baby will be born in the summer. I hope the infectious disease prediction model will help the future where our baby is born and grows up."

Lim Min-hyuk (36), the grand prize winner of KT's 'Post-Corona AI Challenge' and a doctoral student at Seoul National University Graduate School, said in an interview with Asia Economy on the 28th, "I hope the infectious disease prediction model will not only overcome the COVID-19 crisis but also contribute to maintaining a safe society from infectious diseases."

Earlier, KT, together with the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency (NIA), held the 'Post-Corona AI Challenge,' a contest for infectious disease response using artificial intelligence (AI). The event aimed to explore ways to prevent the spread of infectious diseases using AI. Lim Min-hyuk participated in the 'Inbound Prediction Algorithm Modeling' category. The task was to predict the risk of infectious diseases originating overseas, such as COVID-19, entering the country?that is, the number of confirmed cases inbound by country or date.

Over 200 teams competed fiercely, and Lim Min-hyuk's 'Overseas Inbound Infectious Disease Prediction Model,' which demonstrated high accuracy, validity, creativity, and the lowest prediction error, won the grand prize. The prize money was 10 million KRW. KT plans to utilize Lim Min-hyuk's model to enhance the functions of the Infectious Disease Spread Prevention Platform (GEPP). Lim expressed his joy, saying, "I think I was lucky to win. My family is proud."

The model Lim created predicts future news, future roaming data, and future overseas inbound confirmed cases based on news, roaming data, and overseas inbound confirmed cases, sequentially linking these to forecast the number of confirmed cases inbound by country and date. Lim Min-hyuk said, "The most difficult part was resolving bottlenecks during data collection and analysis. Although it was regrettable that I couldn't apply various modeling techniques due to tight deadlines, I believe that continuing research will allow me to build better models."

Lim foresees that KT's telecommunication roaming data will help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. He said, "If combined with roaming users' overseas stay duration, incubation period, infection risk, and flight information, it can quantify which flights are more dangerous. If the modeling is refined further, the trend of overseas inbound infectious disease confirmed cases could also serve as a forecast for COVID-19 status in the future."

Lim Min-hyuk's goal is to create socially beneficial technology in the field combining AI and medicine. He said, "AI technology is quite fascinating because it provides improved results through the interaction of human prior knowledge and machine learning models," adding, "My goal is to become a good researcher in the AI field."