First Place in the Speech Recognition Category of the First Round of the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenge. The research team of Professor Koo Myoung-wan of Sogang University's Department of Computer Science & Engineering — together with Han Jung-wook and Hong Soon-beom of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Cheon Jae-yoon of the Department of Art & Technology, and researcher Lee Jung-pil (a graduate of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering) — entered the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenge and was selected for first place in Track 2 (speech recognition).

The Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenge is a challenge-and-competition style research and development (R&D) contest in which participants compete with algorithms they have developed to solve set problems.

Held under the theme 'Solve a Range of Regional Problems Using Artificial Intelligence Technology', the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenge runs in four stages over three years to 2022 across four tracks — emergency situations (behaviour recognition), violent situations (speech recognition), household waste sorting (object recognition), and reducing power consumption through AI optimization and lightweighting — with the aim of creating a convenient and safe living environment through AI technology.

This round was conducted online; the top 20 teams that best solved the given objectives were selected and each receives an equal share of 167 million won in follow-on research funding to prepare for the second-stage contest.