Stony Brook University Mechanical Engineering

Professor Jongseong Brad Choi of the Mechanical Engineering Department at SUNY Korea has been selected for the “Outstanding Young Researcher Program” under the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Basic Research Support Initiative for 2025. This year's selection was highly competitive, with the number of awarded projects reduced by half compared to the previous year. With this selection, SUNY Korea has secured a total of 1.25 billion KRW in funding over five years. This is one of the largest awards ever granted under this initiative and reinforces the university’s growing research impact.   The research project, themed "Human Machine Interaction," is titled “True Twin: Development of AI-Based Hyper-Realistic Digital Twin Core Technology for Multi-Party Distributed Collaboration and Predictive Maintenance in Mixed Reality.” It focuses on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and visual technologies to develop a real-time remote collaboration system. This research aims to overcome the limitations of physical distance by enabling real-time multi-party collaboration in virtual spaces. By leveraging hyper-realistic visual information, it allows engineers to work together as if they were in the same location without having to visit the site in person. This innovation is expected to establish a new paradigm for remote communication and could become a standard for telecommunication in the future, particularly as remote work becomes more widespread. Furthermore, in the context of a shrinking population and a growing shortage of engineering professionals, this technology is expected to play a key role in supporting the remote operation of global manufacturing industries, such as managing overseas factory facilities. Professor Choi expressed his passion, stating, “At a time when the field of engineering is undergoing rapid transformation with the advent of AI, I am delighted to contribute to expanding academic horizons by incorporating research on visual intelligence.” He added, “This research grant is not just a personal achievement but an opportunity to showcase SUNY Korea’s strong global network and accessibility to cutting-edge technology, while also reinforcing the university’s high research standards among domestic institutions.” Furthermore, he emphasized his commitment to fostering an inclusive research environment, saying, “I want to help undergraduate students become more familiar with AI and other emerging technologies by encouraging them to collaborate with graduate students in meaningful research projects.” Currently, Professor Choi leads the MEIC (Mechanical Systems with Intelligence and Computer Vision) Lab, which focuses on Engineering-Soft-Power as its key research theme. His lab specializes in visual intelligence systems, vision-based control, digital twins, and human-machine interaction. The lab consists of 12 researchers, including four Ph.D. students, four master’s students, and three undergraduate students, all of whom have contributed to innovative research achievements and received numerous awards.  The selection of this Outstanding Young Researcher Project is a significant milestone demonstrating SUNY Korea’s research competitiveness and potential for continued growth. It also marks a meaningful achievement to Professor Choi’s dedicated efforts and the university’s ongoing industry-academia collaboration efforts. SUNY Korea reiterated its commitment to further advancing as a global research hub through innovative and practical research initiatives.   MEIC Lab Website:  https://www.meic-lab.com/ Reference: https://www.sunykorea.ac.kr/news/html/sub03/03.html?mode=V&mng_no=1249

The Mechanical Engineering senior design group, CARmodynamics, won a bronze award at the 14th KSME Student Creative Design Competition (SCDC), organized by the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers (KSME). CARmodynamics consists of five Mechanical Engineering students: Jinkyu Lee, Yunjeong Kim, Hojin Song, Sooyeun Yang, and Sehyeon Jeong. They were selected as one of 15 teams, out of a total of 180 entries, to present at the competition. Their presentation addressed the growing problem of potholes and the need for efficient detection methods. The team developed an automated pothole detection system to replace current manual reporting methods, using a YOLO v5 deep learning model, GPS, and machine learning-based vibration analyses to accurately identify and document pothole locations. Testing was conducted with a custom-built electric vehicle, with structural integrity verified through Finite Element Analyses using ANSYS. The results validated each module's performance, demonstrating the system's potential to improve pothole detection and enhance road maintenance efficiency.   Reference: https://www.sunykorea.ac.kr/en/html/sub05/0501.html?mode=V&no=d1562cb79dd3dccf75c63813f71b769d&GotoPage=1

  ScholarGPS celebrates Highly Ranked Scholars™ for their exceptional performance in various Fields, Disciplines, and Specialties. Prof. Seung Bok Choi's prolific publication record, high-impact work, and outstanding scholarly contributions have positioned him in the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide. Prof. Choi has achieved 1st rank in Vibration Control and 2nd in Smart Materials. Please join me in congratulating Prof. Choi!

  The Spring 2024 ME Freshmen Gathering took place on Thursday, April 25th, in room B618. During the event, students had the opportunity to share their semester experiences and ideas with Provost Hefazi.  

  Professor Seung-Bok Choi (MEC) has received “2024 Best Paper Award” from the prestigious international journal, Actuators, with the article entitled “Applications of Magnetorheological Fluid Actuator to Multi-DOF Systems: State-of-the-Art from 2015 to 2021” Actuators, 11(2), 44, doi:10.3390/act11020044. This has been selected as the winner of the Actuators 2024 Best Paper Awards among 382 papers published in the journal considering the originality and significance of the papers, citations, and downloads. Professor Choi is working at SUNY Korea since March 2021 after retirement from Inha University where he has worked for 30 years. He is still actively serving as journal editors more than 15 international journals (SCI) including Smart Materials and Structures, Scientific Report and Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures. So far, he has published 60 SCI articles with the affiliation of SUNY Korea. Currently, he is a fellow of both Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) and The National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK).  

  Hansol Lim, a Master's student in Mechanical Engineering, won the Bronze medal and a prize of 200,000 KRW in the KSME2023 ChatGPT Competition held on November 1, 2023. Currently he is a research assistant under Prof. Jongseong Brad Choi in the Mechanical Engineering Department at SUNY Korea. The competition required participants to write a 5-page scientific paper in 1.5 hour relying solely on ChatGPT and its associated addons. Hansol wrote a paper titled "LLM-based Fault Diagnosis and Natural Language Response in Military Robots and Drones," - demonstrating innovative approach of how Large Language Models can be integrated into military technology. Please Join me in extending congratulations to Hansol.      

Dr. Seung-Bok Choi, a leading professor of Mechanical Engineering was invited as a keynote speaker and gave a talk at the International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies (ICSET), November 9-10, 2023, Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This conference is held every other year, and the attendees of this year are about 400. The title of his talk is “Applications of Smart Materials to Vibration Control in Diverse Fields”. In his talk, two smart materials of Piezoelectrical Materials and Magnetorheological Fluids were focused demonstrating advanced capabilities of effective vibration control and regenerative energy harvesting. In this conference, he also served as one of international committee members and chairman for the control/robot session.    

The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers (KSME) hosted its annual meeting from November 1st to 4th, 2023, at Songdo Convensia in Incheon. The Mechanical Engineering Department at Stony Brook University in SUNY Korea operated the booth to promote SUNY Korea ME program to the participants.  You can find more details at SUNY Korea News: https://www.sunykorea.ac.kr/en/html/sub05/0501.html?mode=V&no=6ff9cd8f958ad3fbc757d87f42deea11&GotoPage=1      

The team MEIC (Ricardo Ortiz, Ph.D. student, Jonathan Boyakck, Ph.D. student, and Alfredo Valenzuela, Master student, Sambridha Bhattarai, Undergraduate student), supervised by Prof. Brad Choi, won "2023 Global Product-Service Localization Research Award Competition (2023년 글로벌 제품서비스 현지화 연구회 성과발표회)" and awarded by Incheon Technopark director with a prize of 200k KRW on November 3, 2023. MEIC Lab wins this award for 2-years continuously.  Please join us in congratulating Ricardo, Jonathan, Alfredo, and Sambridha!      

The combined graduate/undergraduate team from the PoF lab led by Prof. Changwoon Han—consisting of Jimin Shin, Kent Justine Legada, Jaewon Lee, Juhwan Kim, and Seungil Park—has received an encouragement award at the KSME-LG Future Home Tech Challenge. The title of their award-winning project is "Developing Prognostics Technology of Leakage Detection Sensors for Air Conditioner Refrigerants." This event, co-hosted by LG Electronics and KSME, aimed to recognize innovative projects in electronics. You can find more information about the challenge at the following link: http://ksme-lg.ksme.or.kr/.     Please join us in congratulating Jimin, Kent, Jaewon, Juhwan, and Seungil!

Professor Seungbok Choi, a leading professor in Mechanical Engineering, is a committee member of the Actuator 2024 Conference. This is an international conference and exhibition on new actuator systems and applications. This biennial event takes place in Germany. Please refer to the attached flyer for detailed information about the conference.    

  Hansol Lim, ME Master student supervised by Prof. Jongseong Brad Choi, was awarded with the Best Poster Award for his poster: Hansol Lim and Jongseong Brad Choi* (2023), “Real-time, Non-intrusive Inspection of Structures Using Visual Analytics and Transparency Technology” at the Korean Society of Prognostics and Health Management 2023, held in Seoul, South Korea, July 3-5, 2023. Please join us in congratulating Hansol!

Dr. Yoon Young Kim will give a talk about Computational Autonomous Synthesis of Creative Robot Mechanisms – Challenge and Response.  Dr. Kim is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Seoul National University.  His research focuses on Elastic Wave and Metamaterials, Autonomous Linkage Design and Structural Topology Optimization, Higher-order Beam Theory and Analysis. 

The 1st ME Open Lab Day, held on September 6, 2023, saw an attendance of 44 undergraduate students, 9 graduate students, and 9 faculty members. This event was designed to welcome both ME undergraduate and graduate students and provide an overview of the various research areas within our department. Please check out the video of the ME Open Lab Day from the link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeRz_2Bk-4E

Professor Jongseong Brad Choi (MEC) has received the Young Scientist Award at PHM Korea 2023 (Korean Society of Prognostics and Health Management), held in July 3-5, 2023, Seoul, South Korea. His talk is entitled "Engineering-Soft-Power engaged visualization analytics and human-machine collaboration remote assessment for large-scale structures".  Please join me in congratulating Prof. Brad Choi!