Dae-yeon Kim, a master's student, Seung-yoon Lee, an integrated master's/Ph.D. student, and Min-hyeok Kwon, an undergraduate in POSTECH's Department of Electrical Engineering advised by Professor Seok-hyeong Kang, received the Third Place Award in the 28th ACM International Symposium on Physical Design's Initial Detailed Routing Contest.

The contest is a leading competition in electronic design automation. This year's challenge was to automate and optimize semiconductor routing while observing design rules.

POSTECH placed third among teams from 33 universities worldwide, the first award for a Korean university since the contest began in 2005. The Chinese University of Hong Kong placed first and Nanyang Technological University second.

ISPD 2019 took place April 14–17 in San Francisco, USA.