Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) is accelerating efforts to strengthen its research capabilities in physical artificial intelligence (AI). KIST said on Jan. 2 that it appointed Kwon In-so, a retiring professor at KAIST, as a national special appointee researcher and recruited Kwon as Director General of the Physical AI Research Center.
Director General Kwon is regarded as an expert who has built a long track record of research in Robotics and Computer Vision. In particular, Kwon was the only Korean named to the "Global Top 100 AI Talents," which the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Investment and Technology Promotion Office in China released last year, raising Kwon's international profile.
KIST plans to use this appointment to further elevate the research base of its AI and robotics institute and to push in earnest for the development of a Korea-style physical AI model and technological innovation in AI and humanoids. By strengthening a system that connects research and development through demonstration, KIST aims to secure early competitiveness in next-generation intelligent robotics technologies.
Director General Kwon said, "We will secure core foundational technologies for a Korea-style physical AI model and AI humanoids, and deliver outcomes that the public can feel through demonstration research from the user's perspective." Kwon added, "We will take on challenges as 'one team' by bringing together top-tier talent in Korea across diverse fields including Robotics, vision-language models (VLM), 3D vision, multimodal, human-AI, and world models."
The national special appointee researcher system allows Government-funded research institute to be partially exempt from personnel cost regulations so they can recruit leading scholars at home and abroad under exceptional terms. Director General Kwon is the first to be appointed as a national special appointee researcher at KIST and the fourth case across government-funded research institutes overall.