▶ People②
Jooeun Ahn, Professor in the Department of Physical Education
Although advances in medicine have drastically extended the human lifespan, research on how to move and live effectively remains limited. This is because it requires a comprehensive understanding of the human body, psychology, and engineering. That is why Professor Jooeun Ahn’s journey—grounded in self-understanding and dedicated to forging new paths toward better human movement—is all the more remarkable.
Professor Ahn is one of the few professors among all physical education departments in South Korea with an engineering background. Despite no degree in physical education, he has actively utilized engineering tools to create a new realm, an approach that is in line with the process of crossing subtle boundaries or understanding oneself.
“After graduating from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, I worked in the defense industry and realized that I had a better aptitude for research. I thus started preparing to study abroad, and when I was assigned to a laboratory dealing with mathematical theories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I further realized that research applicable to people was more suitable for me than that on pure theories. I challenged myself with research on the utilization of robots to aid people with their rehabilitation, a task that required me to learn a lot.”
The first theme he examined was human walking. Exploring the reasons for the unique bipedalism of humans among the various walking styles of animals, he intended to create a robot that could assist those who have difficulty walking due to acquired disabilities, including stroke patients. However, he was not able to complete this study without comprehending the principles of how the brain and muscles control movement, and further, the entire system called a ‘human.’ As a result, Professor Ahn entered his second postdoctoral research program to learn about biology and chemistry.
“Although I initially majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering due to my indifference to biology and chemistry, the encounter with problems that I was urgently eager to solve changed my mind. I strongly felt that I had to constantly acquire new knowledge regardless of my preferences for resolving these problems.”
In combining knowledge of biology and chemistry with his foundation in engineering, Professor Ahn was able to rediscover his academic orientation. Rather than being immersed in knowledge itself, he found more value in asking, “How could I change people’s daily lives?”
Professor Ahn has resolved various problems by constantly inquiring how technology interacts with the human body, senses, and emotions. A representative example is his study on preventing falls through sole stimulation, published in an international academic journal in 2020. Based on the fact that the risk of falling increases when the soles of the feet become less sensitive due to aging, he developed a technology that reduces the risk of falling by approximately 15% by transmitting small vibrations to the soles of the feet, and verified its effectiveness. Another significance of this study was that it expanded the research target from the elderly to the younger people.
“If the utility of a certain technology is confined to the elderly and the disabled alone, even those who urgently need that technology will hesitate to use it, and the spread of that technology may be limited. That’s why I developed and patented a set of technologies that can adjust the dull senses of the soles of the feet due to both aging and fatigue. I intended to allow anyone to utilize this technology without avoidance.”
This study is further contributive in that it disclosed the data on age-specific muscle strength and aging from 450 world-class athletes in ten sports (aged 20-75). The analysis result that muscle strength exhibited a sharp decline after age 50, can serve as a scientific basis for health promotion and the establishment of policies on sports participation. This achievement is in line with the definition by Professor Ahn, "a sports engineer is a person who assists people in doing whatever they like better, longer, and more happily through body movements."
The development of corrective tights to address the out-toeing posture of ballet dancers, where the toes are outward rotated, candidly revealed the challenges of interdisciplinary research. “Because tights are clothing, I designed and led this interdisciplinary research project in collaboration with professors from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Fashion and Textiles. To obtain universality and usability, we conducted a survey inquiring about convenience as well as function and composed an article. However, it was highly difficult to publish this research in a journal. The reason was that this article could not be reviewed from the perspective of only one field, such as mechanical engineering or fashion, due to its mixed–research-field nature. It took a significantly long time to give it to the world. It was a discouraging process.”
“Convergence is not something big or grand.
It exists to solve problems by combining knowledge and people from various fields.
That’s why it is crucial to know what type of person
I am and what type of problems I intend to resolve.”
Professor Ahn’s process of convergence toward problem-solving involved a series of challenges; however, he is steadily moving forward with the vision of “being in solidarity with people and aiding them.” His participation in the “Let’s” Creative Dance Program for adults with cerebral palsy, jointly run by SNU Department of Physical Education and SNU Bundang Hospital in 2018, further solidified his vision, primarily because he witnessed how creative dance can restore the disabled’s physical ability and self-esteem.
“The scope of engineering work, my previous expertise, may be limited: Even the best experts don't do research alone. That’s why I always tell my students that it's important know themselves and to collaborate with others. They have to understand themselves through experience to find the problems they are willing to solve, and when they face a task, they will naturally attempt to find people for cooperation and collaboration.”
Professor Ahn has performed silent actions in bringing the abstract word of convergence closer to our daily lives. He will unwaveringly prove that the beginning and end of convergence is finding a problem to solve and solving that problem with various experts to benefit people.
