The steel industry, along with the automobile and electronics industries, has led Korea's economic growth, especially as a key industry, which has had a significant influence on other industries. For the steel industry to continue to lead the economic development of Korea, sustainable R & D is indispensable.

POSCO is a key player in the Korea steel industry and has become a world-class company. However, to maintain its leading position in the world steel industry, which has been following rapidly in China and India, POSCO must develop innovative steel processes and conduct active research on new steel products

In particular, the importance of measurement control and system technology of the steel industry has increased to ensure production of high-quality products, to improve productivity, to realize of pollution-free steelworks against environmental regulations, and to achieve a zero-accident steel mill. However, due to the stereotype that the subject of steel technology should focus on metals, this industry has had difficulty attracting excellent brains from the control and measurement majors.

To solve this problem, POSCO initiated the establishment of the center at a joint meeting of POSTECH Electronics and Electrical Engineering in November 1994. Then after coordination with POSCO, the Steel Control Research Center was established on July 1, 1995, and Prof. Won Sang-cheol of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department was appointed as the center director.

The Center has built a practical industry-academy cooperative system, and by this system, fosters high-quality manpower in the electric and electronics field who can control and measure steel; the center also conducts long-term and continuous research on the basic technology of measurement control systems, and automation related to the steel-making process. In the end, it aims at contributing to advancement of the steel process and the quality of steel products in Korea.

In 1994, the first year of its establishment, POSCO received orders for steel-related projects, and more than 10 professors performed assignments. Since then, we have held joint workshops with the Automated Control Society (ICASE), Daegu and Kyungbuk Branches, and invited seminars on expertise related to control and measurement, and have contributed to research exchanges among related researchers, and technical exchange in steel fields.

In 2004, Professor Won Sang Chul, the center's director, was elected as chairman of mining minerals and metal processing division under the IFAC, thereby strengthening international R & D cooperation. In addition, by establishing research exchange agreements among the world's steel control and measurement institutes and universities, international research trends in steel control are being understood.

From 2001 to 2015, six faculty members of the Electrical Engineering Department participated in the research and carried out 35 related tasks, totaling about 4.6 billion won.

The center 's business is divided into (1) research on basic technologies in the field of instrumentation control related to steel processes, and (2) manpower training in this field. Our goal is to contribute to the advancement of the steelmaking process by performing goal-oriented long-term measurement control and process automation research within the industry-academia-university cooperation framework.

Major research areas include large-scale distributed control systems and real-time control PLC and VME systems, electronic switches for ac power, power compensators, motor drives, control, sensors for process automation, and factory automation networks for measurement technology.

Professor Kim Sang-woo (Center Director), Kwon Bong-hwan, Nam Kwang-hee, Jeong Hong, and Park Poo Gyeon of the Dept. of Electrical engineering are participating in the center, In continuous cooperation with POSCO and others, they are conducting research that can contribute to long-term base technology, and to solve problems in the field.

Radar is a key monitoring and reconnaissance sensor in the field of defense, and its accuracy is being improved remarkably. A radar system must perform functions such as image acquisition and target identification, beyond the existing simple target-detection function. Therefore, the Radar IR Target Identification Research Center was established in November 2012 with support from the Defense Agency and Defense Science Institute. The purpose is to develop original technology and to nurture relevant professionals by studying fusion of sensor technology.

The steering committee shall discuss and resolve all matters be under the leadership of the head of the center. We have four technology exchange meetings per year. The center's research and development projects related to radar IR target identification are classified into five categories.

• MIMO Multi-angle HRRP and ISAR imaging in radar environments and target identification techniques
• Signal waveform characteristics in low frequency band, characteristics of low RCS target and classification technology
• Technology of separating low-RCS high-air targets and other objects by using target maneuvering and fine Doppler characteristics
• Low Speed Target of RCS Maritime Target in High density clutter marine environment/Clutter Discrimination Techniques and ISAR image normalization of traps and identification technology
• Target identification technology of information convergence and fusion stage of AR / IR image

As the government's science and technology policy paradigm shifts to the creation of new industries, i.e., the creation of ecosystem-based R & D centers, the need for centers to perform market-oriented R & D planning and marketing has increased. Accordingly, the technology developed by each department and research institute in the field must be applied to national defense or to open a technology market. To achieve this goal, the Defense R & D Strategy and Technology Cooperation Center ("the Center") was established in April 2013; it was modeled on the Lincoln Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

The Center conducts three main types of business activities. The first is R & D planning and industrial marketing to apply technology developed in the university, to the defense industry. The second is to function as a private think tank to evaluate government policies related to advanced technology and defense research within the university. The third is to market defense-related projects to develop basic technology (Defense Specialization Center, specialized laboratory, basic and international cooperation projects) for each research center and laboratory in the university.
Currently, the center is composed of Professor Kim Kyung Tae (Center Director), Kim Sang Woo, Park Poo Gyeon, Lee Jeong-Soo, HongWonbin, Lee Namyoon, SongHo-Jin (Dept of Electrical Engineering) and Kim Ki Hyun, Kim Dong Sung, Kim Dong Sik, Park Sung Jin, Yoo Dong Hyun (Dept. of Mechanical Engineering).

Research on industry-academia collaboration between LG Electronics, LG Display and POSTECH has been actively conducted since the early 1990s. Research on Plasma Display Panels was conducted in the mid-1990s, beginning with research on TV signal processing in 1991. We are currently studying display drive circuits.

Since the establishment of Display Technology Research Center (DTRC) in May 2002, we have been collaborating to develop next-generation display technology and to maintain the competitiveness of the display field by nurturing manpower.

To create a new way for universities and companies to overcome the low-growth era, we introduced the "Professor of Industry-academia" system for the first time in Korea, and reorganized the Display Technology Research Center, Djsplay-POSTECH established LG Display-POSTECH Industrial Academic Cooperation Center (hereafter, the "Center"). The LG Display-POSTECH Industry-Academic Cooperation Center was established In April 2016. The main goal of the center is to provide researchers with the necessary research personnel at the school in addition to the display research that has been performed in the past, so that they can communicate smoothly with the company and carry out necessary research at all times.

The significance of the center's operation is to provide future-oriented research, and to solve technical difficulties. The research students are expected to be able to experience the company's field problems in advance. This process means that if the related technology network is built inside the university, the competitiveness of the field can be strengthened, research results of the university can be applied directly to the industrial field, and the practical talents that the company desires can be fostered.

In the short term, the Center has developed into a research center with the best technology in the world (PDP technology; Driver circuits; Image processing; High-definition TV signal processing; High-efficiency power supply design; Electromagnetic Interference)
In the long term, we are expanding and developing our research area into the field of comprehensive displays and media. Furthermore, we are establishing a systematic technical cooperation relationship between LG Display and POSTECH in the display field.
To promote this cooperation, the research project is divided into the task of responding to the technical development difficulties of the division, and to the display basic research task.
The LGenius program produces graduate students who are effectively educated the new display technology in display field. The Center is also developing teaching materials in the display field, opening lectures, and retraining industrial manpower.

The Center consists of four laboratories and a steering committee under the Center Director (Professor Kang Bongkoo of Electrical and Electronics Engineering).

Since the establishment of the Display Technology Research Center, LG Electronics has continued to engage in industrial-academic projects with LG Electronics and LG Display.
We developed a 3-mV control method to control the brightness of an OLED accurately. This breakthrough was achieved by conducting research on power circuits for low-power-consumption OLEDs in 2014 to solve the ripple and peak problems of output voltage and current, and by increasing efficiency at low load by conducting an OLED High Efficiency Power Circuit Study in 2015. In addition, the Center and LG Electrical conducted research on high efficiency LED power system in 2014 to develop a high efficiency power supply circuit for an LED system that can be used in wide ranges of input and output. We are studying a "plug-in type micro inverter" for Europe and a 300-W class high-efficiency converter and a grid-connected high-efficiency inverter.

In addition, in 2013, the CAD & SoC Design Lab, a center participating laboratory, conducted anisotropic diffusion-based noise reduction to develop a noise reduction method to improve the picture quality of the display image. In 2014, we conducted Video depth enhancement algorithm and hardware implementation to develop a 2D-to-3D conversion and unsharp masking algorithm to give depth to an image, In 2015, we conducted a study on Implementation of Spatio-Temporal Detection and Post-Processing Technology to Improve Frame Rate Up-Conversion Performance, and thereby developed various algorithms to deal with various exceptions that occur when changing motion estimation and frame rate.
Based on this research we have published 49 papers and been granted 39 patents in the past five years. The subjects of these papers include Li-ion batteries (“Active Cell Balancing of Li-Ion Batteries Using LC Series Resonant Circuit”, 2015); DC- DC Converters (“Passive Snubber for Reducing Switching- Power Losses of IGBT in DC-DC Boost Converter”, 2014); AC-DC Converter Circuit and PDP (“Biased scan of plasma display panel for data voltage reduction”,2012); Color saliency depth estimation (“Time-consistent Depth Estimation for 2D-to-3D Conversion System Using Color Histogram and Variance Map”, 2016; Global motion estimation (“Histogram-based Non-Iterative Global Motion Estimation”, 2015); and an HDR Algorithm (“Rendering of HDR Images to Improve Brightness Discrimination”, 2015). Patents were obtained on topics related to battery cell balancing circuits, bi-directional battery charge-discharge circuits, DC-DC converters, and power supplies for BLUs.

As an electric vehicle research institute of POSCO Group, The E-CAR research group (Research Director: Professor Nam Kwang-Hee, Electrical Engineering) was established in June 2010 to provide electric vehicle business and related R & D results, and to provide related professional manpower.
The research team has advanced such as a Dynamo test room, Durability & vibration test room, and Anechoïc test room, and can evaluate the performance, reliability and durability of products being developed.

The main products being developed by the Research and Development (R&D) group are motors, and inverters as a core part of the electric vehicle drive train. We are strengthening our product competitiveness by developing parts that are lightweight, and have high power density and high efficiency. We use market-leading technology such as system integration. We provide relevant research results to POSCO so that POSCO has Equivalent technology with General Motors (US) and Toyota (Japan).

By providing seminars and educational services to large domestic companies such as LG Electronics, Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai NGV, the research team contributes to nurturing the talents needed for industries and countries.

The group also conducts R&D of key parts for electric vehicles, such as battery management systems and battery chargers. New markets are being created by R&D on motors and inverter test equipment.

In August 2013, we won the POSCO Family Technology Award (Leaping Prize) for contributing to the creation of new business opportunities in the electric vehicle parts field by developing an Electric Powertrain (EPT), which is the core part of the electric car.

Other accomplishments by E-CAR include:

• successful completion of POSCO's EPT for ECO project (October 2010 ~ February 2013),
• development of an ~100-kW EPT
• negotiation of an exclusive sales contract between POSCO and SINA Newchance,
• agreement on a contract with SAIC Motors with EPT for an E-minibus.
• development of a 60-kW EPT and ESM EPT.

To respond to changes in the EV market, we have Subsequent tasks to develop a bus EPT that uses 600-V high voltage, and to develop an EPT motor and inverter design that is customized to SAIC EVs.

In February 2016, we negotiated a MOU to exchange research personnel and to conduct technical information research with the VC business division of LG Electronics and Joint Research. This MOU is expected to contribute to science and industry development by mutual cooperation in technology R&D, and by selection of industry-academy scholarship students and development of education to build professional capacity.