We Didn’t Have to Go This Far
Professor Hwang Junhak had been anticipating three possible outcomes.
One was that Kim Siwon’s team would come back with an improved project.
Another was that Kim Siwon’s team would say, “Given these reasons, I don’t think it’s possible to commercialize this project.”
The last was that they would simply go find another professor and ask him to become their advisor.
Of those three, he had only vaguely judged the last to be the most likely.
“Good afternoon, Professor. I’m Kim Siwon, a third-year student in the Department of Computer Engineering.”
But what Kim Siwon did instead was completely outside Professor Hwang’s expectations.
“I’d like to ask you to spare three minutes to hear our business pivot presentation, along with the prepared PPT.”
Kim Siwon had made an eight-slide presentation, cover included.
He had printed it out and distributed copies to Professor Hwang and to his own teammates.
Then, holding his laptop, he finished preparing to present without even looking at his own printout.
“The slide after the cover explains why we can’t continue the original business plan within this semester.”
Professor Hwang, caught off guard, flipped through the printed pages and looked at the slide Kim Siwon was referring to.
It carefully listed every factor he himself had considered: the conservative nature of the medical field, the time required to obtain KFDA approval, and more.
“To put it simply, even if engineering students with no connections or knowledge in medicine develop this AI, it would still be difficult to take the next steps, such as finding a partner hospital willing to provide the data needed to train the AI, because we lack both the quantitative time and the funding needed for commercialization.”
Kim Siwon advanced the slides on his laptop, and Professor Hwang immediately checked the next page.
It explained their disease detection technology using image-analysis AI, along with possible directions for future expansion.
“But if our technology can be proven not to be absurd, then starting with the lung-cancer detection AI I mentioned earlier, our AI will be used in many areas of the medical field that rely on imaging.”
The next slide showed graphs of the pet industry’s scale, the rise in the number of households raising companion animals, and the CAGR.
“The market is still smaller than the human medical market, but as you can see, the pet industry is also growing as the number of people raising companion animals increases worldwide.”
After the market analysis slides came explanations of diseases detectable through X-rays, related technologies, an abstract for a paper they planned to submit, and a roadmap for future products.
“I’ve compressed all of that into a revised Capstone Design proposal as well. Please take a look.”
As soon as the pitch was finished, Kim Siwon set down his laptop and pulled a freshly printed Capstone Design proposal from his bag, holding it out to Professor Hwang.
“When did he even make all that PPT?”
“How would I know?”
“We must look insanely desperate.”
The teammates seated in a neat row behind Kim Siwon quietly reread the printed slides, marveling at them.
The clean design, the visual elements arranged to highlight only what was necessary.
It all looked far beyond what one engineering student could have prepared alone.
“You worked hard on this.”
Professor Hwang was genuinely impressed.
Capstone Design was called Capstone Design, but for most students it was basically just a pass/fail course they didn’t need to study for.
For someone to suddenly make a full set of PPT slides and work this hard just to persuade a professor like him was almost hard to understand.
“We’d like to develop this project in a better direction. That’s why we’d like to ask you to become our advisor and help guide us.”
For Kim Siwon, making the PPT itself had not actually been that difficult.
He had made business presentations and pitched projects many times in order to receive government grants and support funds.
But right now, Kim Siwon was quite tense.
This was the moment when the decision would be made: whether a professor who could connect them with Korea University’s Veterinary Medicine Department, and who deeply understood image-analysis AI, would side with them.
“Hmm.”
Professor Hwang was genuinely impressed by how much preparation Kim Siwon had put into this.
But at the same time, that admiration brought concern for Kim Siwon’s team.
“What roles have the other team members taken on?”
Looking at Kim Siwon alone, he had already shown output deserving of an advisor.
But if he evaluated the team as a whole, it was difficult to give them an unqualified high mark.
The team members sitting in the back, whispering among themselves as they watched only Kim Siwon’s presentation.
Anyone could see that he was carrying the whole group on his own.
“I’ll be leading the proposal and presentation, but from the development stage onward, I plan to work together with the others.”
“Can they all keep up with that?”
Now the professor was no longer looking at Kim Siwon.
He was only looking at the team members sitting stiffly in the back.
“Yes. They can keep up just fine.”
Choi Yeonghun, who met the professor’s eyes, answered first with confidence.
“I’m confident.”
“There won’t be any problems on the development side.”
“I can handle UX/UI too.”
One after another, the other team members answered the professor with confidence as well.
Those answers were not lies.
They were the ones who had built the product Kim Siwon was talking about now.
“Hmm.”
After considering their confident replies, Professor Hwang spoke again.
“Still, this project seems like it will need quite a bit of help from the Veterinary Medicine Department.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So you don’t have any students in Veterinary Medicine, or any expert you know personally?”
“No.”
At Kim Siwon’s answer, Professor Hwang simply looked at him in silence.
His expression said, Now what are you going to do?
“Still, if you become our advisor, Professor Hwang Junhak, wouldn’t Professor Shin Dongjin agree to meet with us at least once?”
Professor Hwang lifted the corners of his mouth slightly.
“Are you saying one of the reasons you want me as your advisor is because of my connection to Professor Shin Dongjin?”
Kim Siwon thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Yes, it is.”
He decided to win by honesty rather than by making up some obvious excuse.
After a short silence, Professor Hwang Junhak let out a small grin.
“You’ve done your homework.”
Fortunately, Kim Siwon’s judgment had been exactly right.
“You look surprisingly good in checks, student.”
“Pardon?”
“It makes you look very much like an engineering student.”
And just like that, Professor Hwang signed the advisor confirmation line on the Capstone Design proposal with a satisfied expression.
“Submit this, and have the team leader send me another email. I’ll pass along a time when I can help arrange a meeting with Professor Shin Dongjin.”
Professor Hwang had officially become the Capstone Design advisor for Kim Siwon’s club.
“Thank you!!”
“Thank you, Professor!!”
All the team members sprang to their feet and bowed, while Professor Hwang let out a tired sigh, looking mildly annoyed.
“If I see anyone trying to freeload, or if you don’t carry out the proposal properly, you get an F.”
“Yes, sir!!”
＊＊＊
“Phew.”
It wasn’t until I got back into the club room after submitting everything that I could finally let out a relieved breath.
“Good work, Kim Siwon!”
“You really did a lot.”
“When did you even make that PPT?”
“Didn’t you take a business administration class as an elective?”
Nobody blamed me for acting on my own, and nobody seemed offended by it either.
Instead, they seemed grateful.
That was probably because, at least for now, they still saw this as more of a group assignment than a real business.
“If anything changes next time, or if I’m preparing something, I’ll share it with you as I go.”
As soon as I said that, Ha Juwon spoke up.
“Then explain this project to us in more detail right now.”
The others beside her all nodded as well.
I nodded too and opened my laptop again.
> Good work.
As soon as the computer turned on, Badugi appeared and even made a clapping motion.
I did feel a little proud, but I couldn’t just be grateful to it.
It had spent all of yesterday nagging me while I made these materials, but not actually helping all that much.
“I’ll upload the materials I made for internal sharing to the group chat.”
At my words, the team members turned on their laptops or tablets and checked the materials I posted in the chat.
“When did you prepare this too?”
“This morning.”
“Then why are you only sending it now?”
“Because I made it assuming we’d be getting help from Professor Hwang Junhak.”
Only then did everyone seem to understand, nodding as they opened the file.
“What the hell.”
“Why is there so much?”
A PPT that went beyond sixty pages.
It contained the market conditions I had roughly researched, the screen layout, the program’s operating structure, and more.
Honestly, I had intended to record all of that information someday anyway, even if it wasn’t meant for a reveal today.
I never knew when I might forget it.
“This looks like something made by someone who’s already built a product once.”
We had.
All together.
“But don’t animal medical devices still need clinical trials?”
“Really? Didn’t you say we were skipping the lung-cancer detection AI because of the clinical trial stage?”
“Even so, the timeline should be shorter than it would be for a human medical device.”
“And the money?”
“We can get funding through a prototype support program or attract investment.”
“What about the data for AI training?”
“I wrote a rough plan in Appendix 3.”
Only after the small questions kept pouring in did everyone finally fall silent for a long while.
And then they reached one conclusion.
“Getting Professor Shin Dongjin to agree is going to be the real key.”
“Right.”
The reason everyone had gone quiet was probably uncertainty: even they weren’t fully convinced about the product, so how were they supposed to persuade a professor from another department?
“We can do it.”
That was the only thing I could say.
Because I really did believe we could.
“Then what can we do right now?”
At Seo Jeongwon’s question, everyone stared straight at me.
The look in their eyes made it clear that they all wanted this project to succeed.
I calmly told them what we needed to do immediately.
“Let’s make an app.”
Everyone looked at me with slightly bewildered expressions.
“An app? Why an app all of a sudden?”
“You mean the X-ray analysis thing, an app?”
“You want to make a phone app from nothing all of a sudden?”
I shook my head.
“Not the companion-animal disease diagnosis AI. A different, simple app.”
“Why?”
“Do you see the second line in Appendix 3?”
At my words, everyone flipped to the end of the slide deck.
Then they all looked at me with the same expression: What is this supposed to be?
“Making an app. That’s how we get the data to train our AI.”
I uploaded the mock-up images for the app I had made to the group chat.
And as the team members checked those mock-ups, their expressions gradually brightened.
“You mean we exchange something with them, right?”
“We provide labor, and they provide data?”
“Exactly.”
Now we just had to get serious about preparing to collect the data.
“If we’re this well prepared, Professor Shin Dongjin will probably find us pretty impressive.”