Kookmin University (President Jung Seung-ryul) announced on the 12th that Baek So-jeong, Han Ju-hyung, Son Sung-bin, and Lee Jun-sik, who are students in the master's program at the Kookmin University Business IT Graduate School (Dean Park Do-hyung), were recognized for their academic achievements by winning the Best Paper Award at the 2024 Korean Society for Technology Innovation Fall Conference.

The conference, which was held for four days from November 6 to 9 under the theme of “Carbon-Neutral Technology Innovation and Policy,” was an opportunity for researchers and experts in related fields to gather and discuss innovative technology development and policy measures. The research team from Kookmin University won the Outstanding Paper Award for their paper titled “The Possibility and Limitations of Smart Work: Application of Q Methodology to the Perspective of Job Seekers.” The award-winning students, Baek So-jeong, Han Joo-hyung, Son Sung-bin, and Lee Jun-sik, are conducting research on customer/user experience design and behavioral theory based on the design thinking approach and big data-based customer/user data analytics at the Customer Experience Lab of the Business IT Graduate School (supervised by Park Do-hyung).

This award by the research team at Kookmin University is significant in that it presents ways to enhance environmental and social sustainability through smart work in response to the era's challenge of carbon neutrality.

“Smart work has the potential to go beyond simply flexible working arrangements to increase corporate sustainability and contribute to the global goal of reducing carbon emissions,” said Sojung Baek, a master's student. ”While there are many studies that have examined smart work from the perspective of employees or companies, the expectations and concerns of job seekers who will enter the workforce in the near future have been overlooked. I hope that the research results presented at this academic conference will provide meaningful implications for the strategic design of smart work policies by companies and organizational managers.”

“I am very proud that the students have achieved good results at this academic conference,” said Park Do-hyung, the dean of the Graduate School of Business and IT, who is their academic advisor. ”We will continue to actively support them so that they can contribute to solving social problems through innovative and practical research.”

Meanwhile, researchers at the Kookmin University Business IT Graduate School have been recognized for their research achievements both internally and externally, participating in the 4th-stage BK21 Education and Research Team (Team Leader Kwak Ki-young, a team that trains data science professionals to promote social health), the Korea Research Foundation's Mid-Career Research in Science and Engineering (Development of a Social Robot-Based Smart Care Solution Using Big Data Analysis: Expansion from the Socially Vulnerable to the General Public, Research Director Park Do-hyung), and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) Uzbekistan Tashkent University of Information and Communication Business IT Education Capacity Building Project, etc.