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Dr Young-Ok Cha, a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Centre for Electronics, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London, has been honoured with the prestigious 2026 Korean Scientists and Engineers Association in the UK (KSEAUK) Outstanding Research Award (Rising Future Leaders Award).

This award recognises exceptional contributions to science and technology by early-career Korean researchers in the UK who demonstrate outstanding scientific excellence and strong leadership potential.

Based in the Centre for Electronics within EECS and conducting research as part of Professor Yang Hao's Research Team, Dr Cha works at the forefront of artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning applied to materials informatics and data-driven scientific discovery. Her research tackles one of the most critical bottlenecks in the field: transforming unstructured, static scientific publications and figures into structured, machine-actionable knowledge. Recently, Dr Cha led the development of Graph-FINDER, an innovative multimodal AI framework published in npj Computational Materials that automatically extracts and digitises high-precision experimental datasets directly from complex literature plots at scale.

The KSEAUK award also highlights Dr Cha's unique research background, bridging high-level academic research with substantial industrial R&D experience, which includes contributing to numerous international patents during her prior time at Samsung.

The award ceremony was held on 31 October 2026 during the Annual KSEAUK Conference at IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers).