During Aug. 19-20, the 2nd international symposium on IT convergence engineering was held at the POSCO International Center. The main purpose of the symposium was to discuss developments and approaches to Ubiquitous Healthcare (U-Health) and Ubiquitous Environment (U-Environment). U-Health is a new term aiming to provide easy, constant, and reliable health monitoring at home and abroad at an affordable cost.

With a variety of participants including international speakers from the U.S., Japan, Europe, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, over 130 national scholars in four fields, Nanotechnology (NT), Biotechnology (BT), Networking and Communications, and Autonomics, participated in the symposium.

In this symposium, Hideo Miyahara, the former president of Osaka University, gave a keynote speech and POSTECH Prof. Kwang S. Kim, selected as a “National Scientist” in 2010, provided insight into nanotechnology.

“U-Health and U-Environment have become important research topics in both industrialized and developing countries,” said Prof. Meyya Meyyappan and Prof. James Won-Ki Hong of POSTECH’s Division of ITCE. Prof. Meyyappan also added, “The U-Health approach is also very useful for providing better quality of life for aging populations. The U-Environment is a subject of equal importance, due to the increasing adverse environmental changes caused throughout the world by human activities.”