Ministry of SMEs and Startups - Korea SMEs and Startups Agency Hold On-site Meeting with Graduates of the First Cohort of Eardream School

Global AI Competition 'Kaggle' Achieves Silver Medal and Other Successes

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Cheolhyun] The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Lee Young, hereinafter referred to as the Ministry) and the Small and Medium Business Corporation (Chairman Kim Hakdo, hereinafter referred to as SBC) announced on the afternoon of the 27th that they held an on-site meeting with the first graduating class at the Ear Dream School in Mapo-gu, Seoul.

The Ear Dream School is a project that nurtures young technical talents in four major fields?game, finance, distribution, and bio?for venture startups struggling to recruit developers in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, and supports employment matching.

The first class of Ear Dream School consisted of 70% non-majors, completing an eight-month curriculum including theory and practical projects from August last year to March this year. In the practical project, one team composed of five trainees won a silver medal by ranking 47th out of 1,588 teams worldwide, placing in the top 4%, on Kaggle, a global AI competition platform operated by Google. Additionally, 72 trainees who completed the entire course are participating in the employment linkage program, and among them, 38 have already successfully found jobs at ventures and startups.

During the meeting, in-depth discussions were held on the development direction of Ear Dream School. There was also a time to award the Minister’s Award of the Ministry to three outstanding graduates and the Chairman’s Award of SBC to four graduates. Kim Junsu, a graduate who was employed as a machine learning engineer at a startup, said, "Through field education combining theory and practice, I was able to develop sufficient capabilities as an AI developer despite being a non-major."

Jang Gwon An, Head of the Job Division at SBC, said, "Ear Dream School is nurturing young technical talents with practical field experience through long-term intensive practical education," adding, "We will take the lead in resolving the recruitment difficulties of AI venture startups in preparation for the digital transformation era."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.