Theme: B-C-D: Choice between Birth and Death

“What should I have for lunch today?” is a common question we ask ourselves.
So whether or not the lunch you chose to eat was good or bad, it is the result of my choice. Each day is filled with these trivial to ‘once in a lifetime’ choices that ultimately leads to the conclusion that our lives are filled completely with decisions and choices.
But did you ever consider the possibility that the decision that you had made yesterday was the result of something else and not you? And that you are oblivious of simply ignoring and procrastinating the decisions that you must make today? TEDxKAIST 6th Event, B-C-D will share experiences and ideas of the choices and decisions that make up our lives by introducing the exciting and relatable stories of our speakers.

International Building
KAIST
Daejeon, 305-701
South Korea

Sonya S.Kwak

Speaker Sonya S.Kwak is currently an Industrial Design Professor at the Ehwa Women’s University College of Formative Arts Department of Design having completed her Undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. programs at KAIST Department of Industrial Design. Professor Kwak, in one phrase, is a person who breathes life into Robots. Her main fields of research are Human Robot Interaction (HRI) based on Socio-Psychology and Problem Solving Models and she is working on designing human-friendly Robots. Professor Kwak, a designer and a researcher, designs unique Robots based on the inspiration she gets from her research. Emotion Robot ‘Haemi’, Language Filtration Robot ‘Mung’, and Korean Education Robot ‘Hangul-bot’, amongst other robots, have been awarded in various Academic Conferences and have been introduced to the public by the media. At TEDxKAIST Professor Son Ah, Kwak will be sharing her story of the people and interactions she had experienced on her journey to becoming a Robot Researcher and a Robot Designer.

SooA Yeo

Speaker SooA Yeo is an undergraduate student at KAIST Department of Physics and is the CEO of the Talent Donation Social Venture Company ‘Chalk’. ‘Chalk’ was founded in 2011 and it started off as a Talent Donation Volunteer Group under the STX group. The original group consisted of students from KAIST, Sookmyung Women’s University, and Seoul National University and ‘Chalk’ was an extension formed by students who wanted to donate their talent on a regular basis. ‘Chalk’ attempted to overcome the conventional talent donation scheme that limited them with donation by direct visits with the idea of online education. By providing 10 minute videos made by university students online for free, the ‘one to many’ type of talent donation free from time constraints was created. At TEDxKAIST Speaker Yeo will tell us his story on how ‘Chalk’ didn’t end up as just another talent donation group, but became the Social Venture Company that it is today and how the ‘choices’ he had made were for the benefit of the public.

Jeongwon Lee

Jeongwon Lee has completed a Master’s degree course at Seoul National University, and is currently both a senior researcher at the Medical Imaging Laboratory at ETRI (Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) and simultaneously completing his Ph.D course in Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST. Endorsed by books and people, touched by science and the arts, an avid admirer of art museums and jazz bars, Lee captures moments with his Pentax camera and keeps daily records in his 3P binder as a ‘researcher’. Hoping to one day transform the Daedeok Valley of Daejeon to something more like Silicon Valley of California, he has begun working on the ‘Medici Garden Daedeok Renaissance Project’, full of great ideas and a venture capitalist mindset. This project came first place at the ‘Innopolis Idea Contest’ hosted by the Innopolis Foundation, and is currently under development. At TEDxKAIST, he intends to share how he came about choosing to work for the society around him.

Meoung Seok Oh

Meoung Seok Oh is currently majoring in dental technology as well as business at Korea University. Having overcoming the urge to commit suicide at one point in his life, he is now actively engaged in helping those who are socially secluded. He has participated in numerous volunteer works to fulfill this cause, starting with The 1st Touch Friends Campaign, transporting coal for senior residents of Incheon, working at the Seoul Suicide Prevention Center, participating in the Standard Chartered generous library project, making audiobooks for blind people, as well as contributing to the DesignDive EyeCan project for patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease. For such efforts, he has received an award from the city of Seoul. Suicide. It’s not just a simple word that people chat about half-heartedly. Myeong Seok Oh has courageously stepped aside from making such a decision, and is now actively involved in convincing his friends as well as society to do the same.