Experts and organizations recognized for their global influence were selected

Will be awarded prize money of 300million won…awards ceremony will be held on May 31^st


Sang-Kyun Cha, Professor at SNU

The Samsung Hoam Foundation announced that they have selected 5 experts and 1 organization, all of which are recognized for their global influence through leading achievements, as the awardees of the “2022 Samsung Hoam Awards”.
According to Hoam Foundation’s announcement on the 6th, the awardees are ▲Yong-Keun Oh (61), Professor at POSTECH, science prize, ▲Sung-Bok Jang (60), Distinguished Professor at KAIST, science prize, ▲Sang-Kyun Cha (64), Professor at SNU, engineering award, ▲ Keith Jung (57), Professor at Harvard Medical School, medicine award, ▲Hye-Soon Kim (67), poet, art award, and ▲ Heart-Heart Foundation, social voluntary award.

Engineering Award
Sang-Kyun Cha
Professor at SNU, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Education and Career
Born in 1958, Busan. 1980 Bachelor of Electrical Engineering, SNU. 1982 M.S. in Control and Instrumentation Engineering, SNU. 1991 Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, USA. 1992 ~ Current, Professor at SNU

2002 ~ 2005 Founder, Transact in Memory, USA. 2005 ~ 2014 Research and Development Manager, SAP HANA. 2014 ~ 2019 Director, SNU Big Data Research Institute, SNU. 2020 ~ Current, Director, Director, SNU Graduate School of Data Sciences

Awards
Dr. Sang-Kyun Cha is a world-renowned expert in the field of big data, who opened the era of large-capacity memory-based server systems. He developed *HANA, an in-memory database platform for the first time in the world. The platform has been commercialized and is being actively used by leading global companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, Intel, and HP.

Existing large-capacity data systems store data on hard disks with slow processing speed, making it difficult to perform fast calculations and analyze various types of data. Dr. Cha proposed using *DRAM, an expensive but fast type of memory to build a data system with a capacity dozens of times larger than existing systems. In addition, he showed that high-speed real-time big data processing is possible by implementing a large-capacity memory system using a method of selecting and storing frequently accessed data with high importance.

With these innovative ideas, Dr. Cha founded Transact in Memory (TIM) in Silicon Valley in 2002. TIM was strategically merged with SAP of Germany in 2005, after which he co-directed research and development and company-wide commercialization of ‘SAP HANA’, an in-memory database solution. Now, more than 17,000 companies around the world, including Samsung Electronics and Walmart, are using ‘SAP HANA’. Furthermore, the large-capacity memory computing he pioneered has developed into the cloud market. Dr. Cha also contributed to the development of the domestic memory industry.

Dr. Cha, a researcher and an entrepreneur with experience with entrepreneurship and business on the global stage, led the establishment of the Graduate School of Data Sciences at SNU, and is currently the school’s director. He is now also devoted to nurturing talents that possess innovative ideas and a mindset inclined towards challenges.

* HANA: Means ‘hana’ in Korean, meaning one. Symbolizes how the database and the processing device are integrated into a single device.

* DRAM: Used as the main memory of computers as a large-capacity temporary storage device that must be periodically refreshed because the stored information is destroyed over time.

Source: https://ece.snu.ac.kr/community/news?bm=v&bbsidx=52340

Translated by: Do-Hyung Kim, English Editor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, kimdohyung@snu.ac.kr