Youngno Yoon and Cheonga Lee, PhD students in POSTECH’s Department of Electrical Engineering (thesis advisor: Professor Wonbin Hong), won the Gold Prize in the Communication & Networks category at the 29th Samsung Humantech Paper Awards for “Meta-devices Embedded Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface: Design, 3D Evaluation, and OTA Trials.”

Established by Samsung Electronics in 1994, the Humantech Paper Awards are hosted by Samsung Electronics and jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Science and ICT and JoongAng Ilbo. The competition aims to identify and nurture outstanding scientific and technological talent to secure world-leading competitiveness and technological capabilities. At the 29th competition, the authors won Gold after a rigorous three-stage review of 1,972 papers.

Coauthored with Professor Chan-Byoung Chae’s team at Yonsei University, the paper combined electromagnetics, antenna engineering, communication engineering, and materials engineering in a multidisciplinary approach. The researchers developed the world’s first intelligent radio surface capable of sensing wireless communication channels. Using the proposed design methodology, they successfully demonstrated the technology in millimeter-wave 5G and terahertz 6G wireless communication bands.

The study received the Gold Prize for its originality, excellence, and distinctive multidisciplinary character.