Professor Shim Joon-seop (Department of Electronic Convergence Engineering) Research Team Won the Excellence Award at 2022 Embedded SW Contest 

-Can Measure Up to 100 Times Lower Concentration Compared to Existing Technology, Increasing the Accuracy of Inspection -

Students led by Professor Shim Joon-seop (Department of Electronic Convergence Engineering) won the Excellence Award (Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology Director's Award) at the 20th Embedded SW Contest under the theme of 'Cloud AI based microfluidic control technology for COVID-19 detection'.

The participating team BIOS consisted of Kim Soon-jong, Lee Joon-hee, Cho Woo-hee, and Park Min-joon, who are undergraduates of the Department of Electronic Convergence Engineering, and Lee Ju-won, a guidance researcher (graduate student).

The submitted work is a cloud system that implements an excellent real-time COVID-19 detection system with accuracy and convenience, and an AI-based self-diagnosis system for coronavirus (COVID-19).

Self-diagnosis kits currently in use have a problem in that accuracy is not high for early patients or patients with low amounts of virus because they use paper-based antigen-antibody reactions. o solve this problem, the BIOS team led by Professor Joon-seop Shim quantitatively detected the coronavirus (COVID-19) using the ELISA test method used for precise blood tests. Through this, it was verified through experiments that it can measure up to about 100 times lower concentration than the existing technology.

Since the ELISA equipment used in the existing precision blood test is very large and expensive, the accessibility of the general public was low, and it could not be used as a real-time test equipment in the field. The research team used AI to control and automate microfluids so that non-professionals could use them. In addition, a high-performance artificial intelligence program that automates diagnostic programs can be applied to edge devices through cloud computing, so that multiple diagnostic platforms can be controlled simultaneously. This could have a cost advantage. In addition, the test results are transmitted to the database of the web server so that the examinee can check the results of the coronavirus (COVID-19) test in real time and grasp the current status of infection nationwide.

Professor Shim Jun-seop, who directed the research, said, “In order to strengthen quarantine through the current COVID-19 test, it is necessary to quickly grasp the result through an accurate test and monitor it in real time to block further transmission. The portable ELISA analyzer developed in this study is a key technology that can achieve these requirements.”

Meanwhile, this study was conducted as part of the KwangWoon IT eXhibition (KWIX) program of Kwangwoon University. Kwangwoon University KWIX is a program in which a team consisting of undergraduate students and advisors conducts a one-year R&D project to strengthen students' practical education.