Youngjun Cho

• Brief biography
• Publication and Patent
• Research Publications

Brief biography

Youngjun Cho is a lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor in the US) in the department of computer science at UCL and one of the key academic staff in GDI and MSc DDI (Disability, Design and Innovation). Also, he is a co-founder of KIT-AR (UCL/Sintef spinout company). He explores, builds and evaluates novel techniques and technologies for the next generation of artificial intelligence-powered physiological computing1 that boosts disability technology innovation.
He has pioneered mobile thermal imaging-based physiological sensing and automated detection of mental states (e.g. stress). He obtained a PhD in computational physiology from Faculty of Brain Sciences and UCLIC at UCL (and obtained a MSc in Robotics, a BSc in ICT - summa cum laude). In 2011-2018, he worked as a senior research scientist at LG Electronics (full-time: 2011-2015, leave of absence: 2015-2018) and led a variety of industrial research projects. Amongst his contributions, novel 3D input and gesture recognition technologies (for advanced touch screen solutions in vehicles) were successfully commercialised in collaboration with automobile manufacturers including Porsche and BMW.

At UCL, his research has been funded by EPSRC, Bentley Motors, EC H2020, NTT, and DfID. Also, his earlier academic studies (including 4-year BSc, 2-year MSc, 3-year PhD) were fully funded - the primary funders includes prestigious scholarship/grant bodies: EC H2020, UCL-ORS, National Research Foundation of Korea, LG and Samsung. He has authored more than 70 articles (including patents) in areas related to affective, physiological computing, machine learning, human-computer interaction, accessible user interfaces, and multimodal sensing and feedback. Some of the achievements have been featured in forums for the general public such as BBC News, Phys.Org, Imaging and Machine Vision Europe, Science Daily, and SBS News.

1His definition of physiological computing is technology that helps us listen to our physiological and psychological needs and adapts its functionality. Its three technical components are physiological sensing, affect recognition and bio-feedback.

Supervision

As of 2020, Dr. Youngjun Cho supervises 3 PhD students, 5 PDRA/RAs, and over 10 MSc/MEng students (on average per year).

[PhD students, PDRA/RAs]
• Jitesh Joshi (PhD student, Primary supervision)
• Katherine Wang (PhD student, Primary supervision)
• Roxana Ramirez Herrera (PhD student, Co-supervision with Prof Holloway, Dr. Carlson)
• Dr. Temitayo Olugbade (Research Fellow in Bentley Comfort AI, Co-supervision with Prof. Berthouze)
• Zak Morgan (Research Assistant in Open Collective Heartbeat, Primary supervision)
• Meg Obata (Research Assistant in Open Collective Heartbeat, Primary supervision)
• William Bhot (Research Assistant in AT2030 sub-programme, Co-supervision with Prof Holloway)
• Jamie Danemayer (Research Assistant in AT2030 sub-programme, Co-supervision with Prof Holloway)

[Alumni - primary supervision only]
• Jade Savage (Physiological Computing, 2017/18 MSc in CSML) - DeepMind Scholarship
• Delaney Warren (Physiological Computing, 2019/20 MSc in DDI) - UCLFAA Scholarship
• Meg Obata (Physiological Computing, 2019/20 MSc in DDI) - UCLFAA Scholarship
• Alok Suresh (Machine Learning, 2019/20 MSc in CSML)
• Zak Morgan (Machine Learning, 2019/20 MEng in CS)
• Katherine Wang (Virtual Reality, 2019/20 MSc in DDI)
• James Wong-You (Human-Computer Interaction, 2018/19 MSc in HCI)
• Brian Min (Machine Learning, 2019/20 MEng in CS)
• Seunghoi Kim (Machine Learning, 2019/20 MEng in CS)
• Mahdi Nasrollahi (Machine Learning, 2019/20 MEng in CS)
• Amit Patel (Machine Learning, 2018/19 MSc in ML)
• Chang Liu (Physiological Computing, 2018/19 MSc in DS)
• Su Yeon Oh (Haptics, 2019/20 MSc in DDI)
• Yuliang Chen (Physiological Computing, 2019/20 MSc in DDI)
• Bei Xia (Haptics and Visual Impairment, 2019/20 MSc in DDI)

Teaching

COMP0145 (Module Leader): Research Methods & Making Skills
COMP0053 (Module Contributor): Affective Computing and Human Robot Interaction
COMP0159 (Module Leader): MSc Disability, Design and Innovation (DDI) - Dissertation

Boards and Committees

• UCL Grand Challenge of Transformative Technologies member: 2019 - present
• MDPI Sensors Journal Topic Editor Board: 2020 - present
• Snowdon Scholarship review panel (national level): 2019 - present
• Teaching Committee of MSc Disability, Design and Innovation: 2019 - present
• Conference Organising Committee: e.g. ACII 2021 (Special Session Chair), ICMI 2020 (Senior Program Committee), ACII 2019 (Senior Program Committee)