The SeoulTech Data Science Team, consisting of the Information Security Lab (Professor Lee Yunho and researchers, Hwang Inwon, Kim Younghyeon, Lee Seonghoon) and the Data Intelligence Lab (Professor Hwang Sangheum and researchers, Kim Seongcheol, Seo Seungwon) tied with the IBM and Indiana University teams for third place in the international genome analysis and privacy contest, 'iDASH 2021.’ The competition focused on homomorphic encryption and machine learning.

Homomorphic encryption is a technology that analyzes and processes data in an encrypted state to protect sensitive and personal information. Established in 2014 with the support of the US National Institute of Health (NIH), iDASH' is an international genome information analysis and security competition. Every year, global information technology (IT) companies, universities, and research institutes compete, showcasing new security technologies.

This year, SeoulTech's data science team participated in the 'Isomorphic Code-based Virus Strain Analysis' section.

The competition provided coded coronavirus strain data based on genome information of over 8,000 coronavirus strains. The task was to analyze this data using homomorphic encryption and machine learning technology and predict the virus types.

So far, SeoulTech is the only university other than Seoul National University that has won the iDASH contest in Korea.