Professor Sang-Eon Han (College of Education, Department of Mathematics Education) received the Minister of Education Award on the occasion of the 41st Teacher's Day in recognition of his world-class research achievements in the field of digital topology and his contributions to educational development.

An authority in the field of digital topology—a topic that has become a central focus in the global mathematics community alongside scientific advancement—Professor Han has served as a professor for the past 33 years and achieved significant research outcomes, including the publication of approximately 200 papers.

In particular, concentrating his research on digital topology, he has published more than 100 SCIE papers in this field over the past 20 years, delivered keynote speeches, paper presentations, and invited lectures more than 100 times in over 30 countries worldwide, and published 13 books.

In 2019, he resolved the 'digital rough set' theory, a 30-year open problem in mathematics, through the development of an original theory, producing a major impact in the fields of mathematics and computer science and demonstrating outstanding research capability in digital topology.

Based on these research outcomes, he has extended the intrinsic realm of mathematics into applications such as robotics and pattern recognition, information processing, fuzzy theory, industrial and environmental engineering, medical diagnosis and medical data and image analysis, system fault detection and monitoring, neural network theory, and decision-making.

Recently, his work titled 'Digital-topological group theory', published in a leading SCIE journal, establishes a new theory in the digital-topological perspective based on existing topological group theory, amplifying its applications and is expected to lay a foundation for the advancement of mathematics.

In July, he will participate in an international conference at the University of Vienna in Austria to present his latest theories on 'digital adjacency theory'. From July 25, he will also attend the largest international conference in the field of topology at Czech Technical University, where he will present a paper on the recently developed 'Digital-topological group theory'.

Professor Sang-Eon Han said, 'Digital topology is one of the mathematical fields that inevitably accompanies the development of science and digital engineering,' adding, 'Because theories related to digital topology can solve many unsolved problems, their usefulness will further increase in engineering fields based on scientific and digital environments.'