'KPMG Ideathon' Sunmoon University Team Wins with "Multinational Integrated Search Solution"

by Kim Daehyun

Published 23 Feb.2024 10:58(KST)

Updated 23 Feb.2024 11:22(KST)

Samjong KPMG announced on the 23rd that the Bunch team won the award ceremony of the ‘2024 KPMG Ideathon’ held for university students.

The ‘KPMG Ideathon’ is the Korean regional competition of the KPMG Ideation Challenge (KIC) organized by global KPMG, marking its 5th year this year. It is a programming development event where university students majoring in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and Business/Economics propose solutions to social issues and corporate problems with AI-centered ideas.

The Sunmoon University Bunch team, winners of the '2024 KPMG Ideathon,' are taking a commemorative photo with Kim Kyotae, Chairman of Samjong KPMG (first from the left).

This year’s theme was ‘Automation of Corporate Tasks and Productivity Improvement Using Generative AI Models.’ A record number of 64 teams with 313 participants applied, and 11 teams with 58 students who passed the document screening gathered to compete. Participants spent about a month from last month developing prototypes of their ideas through programming. Based on this, they presented their concretized ideas over two days, from the 20th to the 21st.

The winning team, Bunch, consisted of Kim Suhwa, Park Jeongyun, Ueno Gohong, Lee Dongwook, Lee Sangyong, and Choi Junhyuk from Sunmoon University. They introduced ‘VISTO,’ a multinational integrated information search system using AI. Samjong KPMG commented, “The innovative planning and development approach stood out by developing a simple internet browser plug-in that consolidates search engine results from different countries for easy viewing,” adding, “They appropriately utilized generative AI to translate and summarize search results at a glance, and the high-quality prototype implementation and excellent usability were highly evaluated.”

Last year’s winning team, YVIKTA (Yonsei University), also participated this year and won second place with ‘PAPA,’ an all-in-one patent application assistance service. Third place went to the OPTIMA team (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology), which presented ‘Docuflow,’ a solution that contributes to improving corporate productivity by enabling multiple people to collaborate simultaneously on a single document.

The winning team receives a prize of 10 million KRW along with an internship opportunity at Samjong KPMG Lighthouse. The second and third place teams are awarded 5 million KRW and 3 million KRW respectively. All finalists in the domestic competition receive a certificate of participation.

Choi Junhyuk of the Bunch team (Department of Computer Engineering, Sunmoon University) said, “Since the competition was hosted by a corporation, we had to reflect practical elements, so we held many meetings during the idea discovery phase,” adding, “It was good that a systematic system was established from the briefing session to API and server support, and directly implementing and running the server became a great nourishment for deciding my future career related to AI.”