Prof. Rokhyun Baek from the Department of Electrical Engineering at POSTECH received the Minister of Education Commendation for Industry–Academia Collaboration, recognizing his contributions to promoting the commercialization of university technologies through joint research with industry and strengthening national strategic technology competitiveness.

Prof. Baek successfully transferred a technology for reducing leakage current in Gate-All-Around FET (GAA FET) devices, which is currently applied to the 18-angstrom node mass-production process, representing one of the world’s most advanced logic semiconductor technologies.

The award was granted by the Ministry of Education following a recommendation from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). The ceremony was held during the opening event of the 2025 Industry–Academia Cooperation EXPO on October 29, 2025, at EXCO in Daegu, Korea.

Gate-All-Around FET (GAA FET) is one of the most advanced semiconductor device technologies in the logic semiconductor sector, which accounts for approximately 70% of the global semiconductor industry. The technology marks the transition from the nanometer era to the angstrom era in semiconductor fabrication. Currently, only Samsung, TSMC, and Intel are capable of manufacturing GAA FET-based chips, which are used in high-performance AI and mobile processors, including NVIDIA Rubin Ultra, AMD Instinct MI450, Apple A20, Tesla Dojo and Optimus, and Intel Panther Lake.