Professor Yong Man Ro received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST. He conducted research at various research institutions, such as Columbia University, the University of California, Irvine, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He also worked as a visiting professor at The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is currently a full professor of the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST. He is also directors of Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, Image Video System Lab., and Integrated Vision and Language Lab. at KAIST.  

Prof. Ro received the young investigator finalist award of ISMRM in 1992 during his PhD study and the year scientist award (Korea) for his achievement in 2003. He served as an associate editor for IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He serves as an associate editor in IEEE Transactions on CSVT. He served as a TPC in many international conferences including the organizing chair/program chair of MMM 2020/PCM2015 and IWDW 2004. He organized several prominent special sessions including “Explainable Deep Neural Networks for Image/Video Processing ICIP 2021, 2022, "Digital Photo Album Technology" in AIRS 2005, "Social Media" in DSP 2009 and "Human 3D Perception and 3D Video Assessments" in DSP 2011. 

• Multimodal Deep learning 

• Integrating Vision, Speech, and Language for AI 

• Multimodal Object and Motion Detection/recognition

• Inclusive Human Multimodal Conversation

• Analysis for Competency, Interpretability, Memorability, and Robustness of Deep learning Model

• Multimodal Prompt with Large scale model

• Computer Vision and Multimedia 

• Professor (current) in School of Electrical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

• Director (current) of Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (CARAI), KAIST

• Directors (current) of Image Video System Lab (IVY Lab) and Integrated Vision and Language Lab (IVL Lab), KAIST

• Chair (fmr) of signals and systems group of the Department of Electrical Engineering in KAIST

• Department vice chair (fmr) in the Department of Electrical Engineering in KAIST

• Researchers (fmr) in University of California, Berkeley (research fellow) and Columbia University, New York (Staff Associate) 

• Technical Committee (current) of IVMSP (Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing), IEEE Signal Processing Society

• Associate editor(current) in IEEE Transitions on CSVT

• Associate editor (fmr) in IEEE Signal processing letter

• Founder and CEO (fmr) of IVSYSTEM Co. LTd.

• Visiting professor (fmr) at University of Toronto

• Advisory Committee (fmr) on Academic Policy, Ministry of Education, Korea

• Research Advisory Committee (fmr) ADD & ETRI

• Technical Advisory Committee (fmr) (Samsung) 

• MPEG delegate (fmr)

• KI Convergence Research Award (KAIST Institute), 2021

• Impact Research Award (College of Engineering, KAIST), 2021

• Technology Innovation Award (College of Engineering, KAIST), 2019

• Award for Academic Excellence (KAIST), 2015

• KAIST Merits Award, 2013

• The year’s Scientist Award (Korea), 2003

• Excellence in New Technology Award, Korea ministry of information communication, 2003

• Distinguished Scholar Award in Taejon University, 1995

• Young Investigator Finalist Award in ISMRM, 1992, U.S.A.

• Student Stipend in ISMRM, 1991, 1992, U.S.A.

• Academic Excellence Awards (summa cum laude) in Yonsei university during 1981, 1982, 1983, and 1984 

• Outstanding Paper Award in ACL (2024)

• 1st Place Winner of Ad-hoc Video Search Competition, Video Browser Showdown (2022)

• KI Outstanding Researcher Award, KAIST (2021)

• Honor Prize in Samsung HumanTech (2021)

• Silver Prize in Samsung Human-Tech (2019)

• Best Paper Finalists IEEE ICIP (2019)

• Robert F. Wagner All Conference Best Student Paper FinalLists Award in SPIE Medical Imaging, 2018

• Best Paper Award in IEEE/IEIE ICCE-Asia, 2018

• Best 10% Paper Award in IEEE ICIP, 2015

• Best Student Paper Award in PCM, 2015

• Honorable Mention Poster Award in SPIE Medical Imaging, 2015

• Best Poster Award in Global 3D Tech. Forum, 2013

• HumanTech Paper Award in Samsung HumanTech., 2017

• Prize Medal in Samsung HumanTech, 2011

• This Year’s Paper Award in Korea Information Processing Society, 2016

• Best Paper Award in Korea Information Processing Society, 2016

• Top Research Achievement Award in KAIST, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2022

• Best Paper Award in Korea Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference, 2013

• Best Paper Award in KISPS, 2009

• Best Paper Award in KISP, 2006, 2007

• Best Paper Award in Korea Multimedia Society, 2005, 2007, 2009 – 2017

• Best Paper Award in Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies, 2005 

• Research on multimodality recognition and generation for human-AI teaming

• Research on competency-artificial intelligence 

• Development of predictive visual intelligence based on visual memory 

• Research on explainable artificial intelligence in plug-and-play manner

• Development of AI-based object automatic recognition/identification 

• Research on robust multimodal recognition model 

• Research on causality-aware multimodal recognition model 

• Development of talking face generation 

• Development of AI-based object detection in wild environment

• Development of AI-based target identification algorithm

• Research on human-level learning and reasoning framework for decision making 

• Research on input image abstraction for visual memory