GIST and the Gwangju government held a starting ceremony for the ‘Civil Safety Industrial Council’ at Kim Dae-jung Convention Center on October 28 with industry, academy, research institute, and public sector experts on disaster safety. This council was established to solve immediate social problems such as disaster, safety, accident, and prevention and build a safe society by developing disaster safety technologies in cooperation with the local community regarding the responsibilities and roles of the local community for disaster safety in response to the post-COVID-19 era. In S. Kim, the Vice President for R&D at GIST, will set up quarterly meetings as the chairman and gather strengths from industry, academy, research institutes, and public sector to find effective solutions for disaster safety tailored to the region. The conference held this time focused on the disaster safety control tower, artificial intelligence + disaster safety R&D projects.

GIST held the “2020 GIST Online Science and Culture Week” event from November 2 to 27 to communicate with the local community and spread the science culture. This event comprised various online events that not only GIST members but also local residents, elementary and middle school students of Gwangju, prospective entrepreneurs and businessmen, and people from the science and technology field can enjoy together to deliver the message of comfort and hope regarding COVID-19. This year's Science and Culture Week event had a total of 10 events held in non-contact manner (online) by using YouTube Live broadcasts, videos, and Zoom lectures. Also, it was held in a special format to allow anyone to participate in the events through the website (sc.gist.ac.kr).

SHIFT, a non-profit organization consisting of college students with various specialties and interests, including GIST students, held the 'Junction X Seoul 2020' hackathon, which successfully licensed Junction, the largest hackathon in Europe. Junction X Seoul 2020 is the second hackathon held in Korea. This global event was held online from October 9 to November 11 over three days and two nights using software like YouTube Live Broadcast, Zoom, and Slack in Seoul, considering the global pandemic situation. Unlike previous hackathons, the competition was conducted in a 'track-challenge method' in which participants can freely select and solve problems among various topics.

GIST is recruiting new students for the 12th time through rolling admission for the year 2021. GIST College plans to select a total of more or less 180 students this time. Around 115 students will be selected through regular screening, around 40 through the principal's recommendation screening, and around 15 for the equal opportunity screening within the category of screening based on school record, and around 10 students will be selected through special screening within the category of screening based on practical skills. Regarding the COVID-19 situation, GIST will switch the interview screening for the year 2021 to a full-scale “Non-contact (online) Screening” to screen applicants through real-time online interviews. The announcement of the final successful candidates for the year 2021 will be given on December 11th, and the announcement of additional successful candidates will be given from December 31st to January 4th, 2021.

The research team led by Professor Hong Kook Kim of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science won the Most Excellent Thesis Award at the Joint Signal Processing Academic Conference. GIST applied the fuzzy theory to the VQ-VAE (Vector Quantised-Variational AutoEncoder) in the thesis titled “Variational Autoencoder Based on Fuzzy Discrete Learning,” which was led by Professor Hong Kook Kim (corresponding author) and carried out by Dong-geon Park (lead author). The research team proposed a model which hands over the distance to the code book in the form of a linear combination for the existing method to maximize the use of the code book and also form a meaningful data expression method and had the honor of winning the Most Excellent Thesis Award.

The new singer, Hayeon, released her debut single, “Eyes on you,” through various online music sites at 12 p.m. on December 7 and made her official debut in the music scene. This album was produced by Enter Arts Co., Ltd. (CEO Chan-jae Park) by introducing the AI composition technology from GIST. For Hayeon's debut single, the human arranger created the song based on the melody and rhythm from the song composed and arranged by AI and Hayeon partially wrote the lyrics and sang the song. Professor Chang Wook Ahn of GIST who developed the AI composer said, “It is still at the level of helping human musicians, but the future is looking positive because more musicians wish to collaborate with the AI composer."

Gil Ju Lee, currently in the doctoral program in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was selected as the best postgraduate in the field of optical engineering by an American optical science journal this year. Gil Ju Lee had the honor of being selected for the 'Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Student Travel Grant,' which carefully selects three graduate students who showed excellent research achievements among optical engineering papers published in the Frontiers in Optics of the Optical Society in 2020. The thesis is the result of the joint research conducted by the research team led by Professor Young Min Song to which Lee belongs and the research team led by Professor Dae-hyeong Kim of Seoul National University, published in Nature Electronics in June of this year.