This morning we left Busan and headed to Seoul, with a stop in the city of Daejeon. I will spare you the description of the four hour bus drive, in which almost everyone slept anyway. The interesting part of the day started with the excursion to KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. We first received a short presentation about the planning and then we went to visit the labs.
The first lab was the Integrated Organic Electronics Lab (IOEL). Here they do research about organic semiconductors. Carbon materials are viable as semiconductors since they are widely available, cheap and have other and more tunable properties than silicon. An example of these organic semiconductors are transparent and flexible OLED’s.
The second lab was a biomedical lab about neural stimulation from outside your head with ultrasound. For example, they perform tests on sleep and epilepsy on mice with electrodes on their heads. The human epilepsy gene is inserted in the mice and ultrasound suppresses the epileptic reaction.
The third lab was 3D-Micro-Nano Structures Lab (3DMNSL). Here we got cookies and drinks for during the presentation so that was nice. The presentation showed the history of electronic development and that it focused so for on transistors. Nowadays they want to focus on other parts as well and make them on nanoscale (e.g. a mechanical switch which has no leaking current, unlike a transistor).
After the presentations we had lunch with local students. The lunch was very big: even Stijn could not finish it even though he skipped breakfast! It was very tasty though. After lunch Martijn gave a presentation about the TU/e and the Netherlands. After this a Korean student gave a presentation about KAIST and his personal opinion on technology.
Next we went to ETRI, a well-guarded telecommunications and image processing institute. Dirk smashed a fly out of the air and was afraid that he broke espionage equipment. In ETRI we first got a video introduction before we started with the tour. Afterwards we were given a tour through their exhibition hall, where examples of their technology were on display. There was an augmented reality stand, where Quinty could paint fishes that would then appear on the screen (she couldn’t paint within the lines though). Meeuwis and Thijs showed off their dancing skills by dancing in a video clip, Rick went on safari in a virtual reality car and some people had their face automatically painted in Van Gogh’s style. The hall was very small, so soon we returned to the bus to drive further to Seoul.
After dropping our bags in the hostel, we had free time to explore the city and get something to eat. I went to the Hard Rock Café with a few people. Here there was a live music performance and the food was delicious. We even sang a Dutch birthday song to a Korean girl and we made group pictures on stage. It was a wonderful evening!
– Esther Dommisse
