[Edaily Reporter SOYEON KIM ] SamsungElectronics is going all out for its semiconductor AI Transformation (AX) initiative by recruiting Professor Han Bo-hyung of Seoul National University, an authority in deep learning and computer vision AI, and Han Tae-rin, an executive and data engineering expert. The strategy is to integrate AI across the entire semiconductor spectrum—from design to process and manufacturing—to boost R&D efficiency and productivity, and to maintain its overwhelming lead in the semiconductor industry even in the AI era.

According to industry sources on the 14th, SamsungElectronics has appointed Han Bo-hyung, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seoul National University, as a Fellow (a vice president-level R&D expert). As a Fellow, Han will lead the development of AI models specialized for semiconductor R&D at the AX·PI Center within the Device Solutions (DS) Division. Han will begin working full-time at SamsungElectronics’ DS Division starting today.

Professor Han is an authority in the field of vision AI—an artificial intelligence technology that enables computers to learn from large-scale image and video data to recognize objects and patterns within images or videos and analyze their meaning.

Notably, Fellow Han is the first person to hold a concurrent position, working at SamsungElectronics while maintaining his current professorship at Seoul National University. He will balance his research at Seoul National University with his work at SamsungElectronics. This move is seen as SamsungElectronics’ effort to directly recruit top-tier AI experts from academia to strengthen its competitiveness in semiconductor AI and to rapidly integrate external expertise into its R&D operations.

Han plans to focus on developing AI models specialized for semiconductor R&D within the Device Solutions (DS) Division to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the R&D process. The key objective is to use AI to analyze the vast amounts of data generated during research and design, thereby increasing the speed and accuracy of the development process.

SamsungElectronics has also recruited Han Tae-rin, a senior vice president and data engineering expert. A former Meta employee, Han was previously in charge of AI-related operations at Persona, a digital identity verification platform company. Han will be responsible for building “AI-Ready Data”—high-quality data that can be immediately utilized by AI.

This strategy aims to solidify the foundation for semiconductor AI-driven transformation (AX) by securing not only the performance of the AI models themselves but also the data competitiveness to support them. The goal is to accelerate the enhancement of SamsungElectronics’ internal AI capabilities and their application to actual semiconductor operations by successively recruiting external AI and data experts.

SamsungElectronics plans to expand the application of AI across all core semiconductor operations, including design, process, and manufacturing. This move reflects a sense of urgency: as AI has emerged as a key competitive factor that determines semiconductor development and productivity, falling behind competitors in AI capabilities could result in losing the lead in the semiconductor technology race.

SamsungElectronics intends to continue securing key talent in the AI and data fields and to disseminate their expertise throughout the organization to strengthen company-wide AI capabilities. The company aims to make AI a new pillar of its semiconductor competitiveness.