Capstone Design
I was back in class, sitting among the members of my club once again.
It was a liberal arts lecture attended by only about thirty students.
I had signed up for it because it was a required elective for anyone who wanted to start a club for entrepreneurship.
The only engineering students in the room wearing checked shirts were our club members.
"Where did you go all of a sudden?"
"Oh, just to the restroom for a bit."
I had returned to the past, and all the knowledge of the future still remained in my head.
Which meant the way I approached the things taught in lecture was completely different from before.
The classes I had once struggled to keep up with, or the ones I had rushed through after doing only the assignments, now opened up in a new light.
This was going to be interesting.
"Starting a business is easy. You can register a company in a single day. But starting one properly is difficult."
The professor began with the most basic explanation, speaking at a level suited to college students.
What business was, what kinds of industries dominated in Korea, and so on.
Most of it was material I had already learned through practice in my previous life.
Seeing it laid out as theory made me realize, all over again, that I had gone into business in my last life with no preparation at all.
"You can't just make a product and sell it because you feel like it."
In the middle of the lecture, the professor glanced down at the attendance sheet.
Then he began calling names at random.
"Kim Jihoon from the business administration department?"
"Yes!"
"If a cosmetics company makes a new product, can it be sold to consumers right away?"
"Uh, yes?"
The student named Kim Jihoon looked at the professor with a flustered expression.
His face clearly said, What kind of question is that?
"Well, it might be possible, and it might not be."
"Hmm."
The professor's expression shifted faintly.
It was as transparent as could be: He doesn't know either.
"Kim Siwon from computer engineering?"
"Yes."
"What do you think?"
"Are you asking about the approval and licensing stage?"
At my words, the other students kept glancing sideways at me.
I even heard whispers of, "Approval and licensing? Why are we suddenly talking about that?"
"Oh."
Unlike the students, though, the professor looked mildly surprised as he stared at me.
He hadn't even heard the answer yet. Was there any need to be surprised already?
"Right. Do you think cosmetics can be sold directly to consumers without approval?"
"For domestic consumers, it would probably take about three months. Overseas, it would depend on each country's certification standards, such as CE and FDA. Of course, if you include the time needed to prepare the documents, it could take longer. On the other hand, if it's a copy product of something already approved, the time required could drop dramatically."
The lecture hall went quiet.
The professor covered his mouth with his hand, and the students openly turned around to see who had said that.
"Do you have any RA-related experience or certifications?"
"No, I don't."
After a brief silence, the professor asked me a question, and I answered no.
I was only responding because I had looked into that process while getting TA Medical's products approved in my previous life.
"Honestly, I wasn't expecting the right answer when I asked, but yes, that's about right for cosmetics. If you're talking about medical device approval later on, it'll take even longer."
As the professor turned the PPT slide, he began explaining the approval process in simple terms.
"What? When did you study something like that?"
Choi Yeonghun, sitting next to me, asked with a rather shocked expression.
"Just picked it up somewhere."
I couldn't exactly say, I studied it against my will because I had to struggle through the approval process in my previous life, so I gave an offhand answer.
Then Yoo Jiwon, seated beside him, looked at me with a slightly worried expression.
"Then does our capstone design project need to go through that approval too?"
"Our capstone design project?"
"Yeah. We said we'd do the capstone as an image-analysis AI that can tell muffins from chihuahuas."
Ah. So that was why I had regressed to this exact date. It was because of capstone design.
Capstone design.
A team project based on the major knowledge you learned during your first and second years.
In simple terms, it was a free-topic group project.
The club members and I had all taken the course with the goal of starting a business.
In my previous life, because I still cared about my grades, I had gone to the department chair, who was generous with passes, and asked him to supervise us.
Thanks to that, we got a pass with a result that amounted to almost nothing, without receiving any real help.
"That AI doesn't need a separate approval process."
"Thank goodness."
But I had no intention of doing the exact same project as before.
I still remembered how we had become latecomers in other fields because we focused too hard on pushing image-analysis technology to its limit and commercializing it.
At this point, it would be better to prepare for a real startup from the capstone stage itself, where the school system still allowed us to receive guidance from professors.
"But what if we changed our capstone item a little?"
At my words, even the club members sitting farther away looked at me in confusion.
"You know we have to find our supervising professor by this week, right?"
"Why do you want to change it all of a sudden?"
"Because I thought of a better startup idea."
My answer left everyone plainly unsettled.
"Let's talk properly after class. I'm not saying I'll decide on my own."
Only then did everyone's expressions begin to soften.
I couldn't just change the direction of a group project on my own.
If I did, teamwork would collapse in an instant.
I quietly opened my laptop.
I wanted to check once more which professors were in our department.
I thought you were going to listen to class seriously.
Then Badugi moved to the lower right corner of my laptop screen and grinned at me.
But that grin looked like the kind of smile that said it had wanted me to do exactly this.
You said to start living diligently from today on.
I typed into Notepad with a blank expression.
After that, I went to the university homepage and opened the faculty introduction page, reading through each professor's profile one by one.
Badugi dutifully read through them too.
CVPR, ICCV, ECCV. Quite the range.
They're professors at Korea University, so of course they've submitted to all of them at least once.
The papers and careers the professors had submitted made their research interests easy to see.
Among them, I was looking for a professor with sustained interest in image-analysis AI.
"Found him."
And fortunately, one professor's interests overlapped with mine to a reasonable degree.
Professor Hwang Junhak.
A professor with experience in image analysis using artificial intelligence.
He wasn't exactly a stranger to me in my previous life.
Once we had started dealing with image-analysis AI in earnest, we had tried contacting him several times.
"I can't spend my time dealing with kids who just half-ass their preparation."
...and at some point he had cut off all meetings with us.
Back then, we had been hurt by it, wondering, Why is he being so cold?
But as AI departments sprang up everywhere and interest in artificial intelligence grew, more and more people began asking Professor Hwang for help with one thing or another.
In that situation, it must have been exhausting to deal with reckless students saying, "We want to start a company, so please help us find the way!"
I was thinking of that professor too.
But even Badugi acknowledged it: there would be no one more useful to our business than this professor.
But do you have the confidence to deal with him?
That was the problem.
We needed this professor, but would he need us?
We have to try.
But try we had to.
And we had to be able to handle it.
If our business idea couldn't even stand up to a professor who had no personal grudge against us in a student-professor relationship, then of course it wouldn't stand up to investors either.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
OT ended in forty minutes, and we gathered naturally in the club room.
As soon as everyone sat down, Ha Juwon looked at me and asked, "So what exactly are you changing in the capstone proposal?"
As expected of Ha Juwon, who would soon become our PM.
The moment she heard the proposal was changing, she reacted first.
"Should I print the proposal now and hand it out?"
"Yeah. I think we need to talk to the professor right away after hearing this."
"Right. We're already a little late."
At their words, I nodded and walked over to the club room computer.
Then I started printing out the capstone design proposal.
"What? An AI for diagnosing lung cancer through X-rays?"
"What? What are we doing?"
"Look up there. It says AI for diagnosing lung cancer through X-rays."
The club members who had trotted after me were shocked when they saw the large title on the capstone proposal.
"Weren't we just making an AI that could tell a chihuahua from a muffin?"
"But this does seem more impressive if it's in the medical field."
"Can we even make something like that?"
"Just wait until it's done printing."
The capstone topic we had planned in my previous life was an AI that could distinguish chihuahuas from muffins.
There was a half-joking, half-serious saying in AI circles that "AI can't tell a chihuahua from a muffin," and based on that, we had wanted to make an AI that could perform precise image analysis.
"But why did you change the topic to this?"
"What exactly can we do with this?"
The questions came pouring out, and I quietly handed the printed copies to everyone.
I had to think of this as the first pitch of this life.
It had to be a presentation no one could reasonably object to.
"First, I thought about where this 'precise image-analysis AI' we wanted to build could be used. Where could a technology more precise than the image search functions on portal sites be put to good use?"
In truth, it wasn't something I had thought of myself, but a question many companies in my previous life had already wrestled with.
"And I thought it would be good for early detection of diseases like cancer."
"Ah."
"That makes sense."
"In medicine, even improving accuracy by 0.1 percent matters."
Everyone nodded and agreed with me.
That gave me confidence, and I continued.
"So I thought, what if we made an AI that detects diseases like lung cancer or tuberculosis through chest X-rays?"
"That's good."
"That's fresh!"
It was fresh, yes.
AI did exist now, but it wasn't being used nearly as actively as it would be in the era before I regressed.
"I like it!"
"At this level, the department chair would probably approve it right away."
Everyone applauded happily.
But I had no choice but to pour a little cold water on that excitement.
"But what do you think about having Professor Hwang Junhak as our supervising professor?"
At my words, everyone who had been chatting brightly fell silent.
Well, I knew why.
"Professor Hwang Junhak?"
"That Professor Hwang who dishes out C's?"
"Do you want to fail capstone?"
Professor Hwang Junhak was ruthless.
A professor who handed out C's or D's to any student whose output didn't match what he had taught.
So if you said you were taking Professor Hwang's class, it practically meant you'd failed your course registration.
Given his personality, it was only natural that he would brush aside students who said they were preparing to start a business.
"Because he has done research related to image-analysis AI, right?"
Just when I was wondering how to persuade everyone, Choi Yeonghun looked at me and asked that question.
"Yeah."
Choi Yeonghun.
The member who respected Professor Hwang so much that, even in my previous life, he had been the one to say we should seek his help.
"If we think beyond our grades right now and about our actual startup later on, I think it would be good to build a connection with this professor."
At my words, the others thought it over, then nodded one by one.
"If he turns us down, we're going straight to the department chair?"
"Good."
"Ugh, that's scary."
"I trust Kim Siwon."
First pitch, success.
I looked down at my phone with a satisfied expression.
What would that Badugi bastard say this time?
It should be fine for a capstone design project.
Unfortunately, Badugi's reaction wasn't as positive as I'd hoped.
Why?
I opened the phone memo app and hurriedly asked Badugi.
If there was any problem with the plan in Badugi's view, I wanted to change it right away.
No. It's fine for capstone design.
But Badugi still wouldn't give me a clear answer.
Just say yes or no.
You're saying it's not enough for a startup?
It'd be hard to turn this into a real company.
I couldn't understand at all why Badugi was saying that.
But I didn't have to wait long to learn the answer.
"You're not actually going to start a business with this, are you?"
The moment Professor Hwang Junhak read our proposal, that was his reaction.
"It's not bad as a capstone design topic."
For Professor Hwang, that was a fairly good assessment.
But since our final goal was a startup, I couldn't simply be grateful for the professor's words.
"If we look at it from a business perspective, could you tell us what parts should be improved?"
I asked the professor directly.
He gave a faint smile and replied, "Go find the reason yourselves by 3 p.m. this Thursday. Then I'll become your capstone supervising professor."