PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Namkug Kim

Also known as 김남국, Kim Namkug

Namkug Kim is a professor of Convergence Medicine at Asan Medical Center whose research applies deep learning to medical images. He earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in industrial engineering at Seoul National University, became an assistant research professor of radiology at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in 2009, and gained tenure as an associate professor there in 2019. His MI2RL team won second prize in the MICCAI 2018 segmentation decathlon, and in 2022 he jointly supervised a Nature Communications study on a generative model that triages emergency brain CT scans. He co-authored the PANORAMA pancreatic cancer study published online in The Lancet Oncology in 2025. In July 2026, he was a corresponding author of an npj Digital Medicine study on a multi-LLM pipeline for radiology board preparation.

Now at
Office for Government Policy Coordination and Asan Foundation

Timeline

  1. 2009–2018

    Faculty at Ulsan College of Medicine

    He holds BS, MS and PhD degrees from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Seoul National University. From 2009 to 2014, he is an assistant research professor of radiology at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine, and from 2014 to 2018 an assistant professor of Convergence Medicine and Radiology there.

  2. 2017

    A President's Award for reform

    In 2017, he receives the President's Award of South Korea, an Award for Merit for Regulatory Reform. He has been a member of the bio-healthcare section of the Regulatory Reform Committee at the Office for Government Policy Coordination since 2016.

  3. 2018

    Second prize at MICCAI 2018

    In 2018, he, researcher Lee A-reum and graduate student Park Beom-hee form the MI2RL team (Medical Imaging and Intelligent Reality Lab), which wins second prize in the universal medical image segmentation decathlon challenge at MICCAI 2018. The team's cascade U-Net learns an E-Net, which specifies an organ or disease, together with a P-Net, which segments it accurately. Only 19 of the 189 registered teams reach the finals.

  4. 2019

    Tenure and kidney rejection AI

    He becomes a tenured associate professor of Convergence Medicine and Radiology at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in 2019. In April 2019, a team headed by him and Go Heoun-jeong of the Department of Pathology presents an AI system for assessing rejection after a kidney transplant, and in December 2019 he co-authors the Neurospine review "Deep Learning in Medical Imaging".

  5. 2022

    Brain CT triage and osteoporosis AI

    In January 2022, a team led by him and Jung-Min Koh of Endocrinology and Metabolism develops a deep learning algorithm that screens for high osteoporosis risk from chest x-ray images with 90% accuracy. In July 2022, Nature Communications publishes an anomaly detection algorithm trained on brain CT scans of healthy people that reprioritizes radiology worklists for emergencies; he and Gil-Sun Hong jointly supervise the work, and in a clinical simulation it cuts the median wait time by 294 seconds.

  6. 2024

    Liver cancer and glioma AI

    In April 2024, a team led by Kang Mo Kim of the Division of Gastroenterology and him develops an AI-based clinical decision support system that suggests treatments for individual hepatocellular carcinoma patients and predicts survival, using data from 2,685 patients at nine institutions. In June 2024, a team led by Ji Eun Park and Hye Hyeon Moon of the Department of Radiology and him uses generative AI-based augmentation on MRI images of 565 glioma patients to improve IDH mutation prediction.

  7. November 2025

    The PANORAMA pancreatic cancer study

    In November 2025, The Lancet Oncology publishes the PANORAMA study online, with him among its authors. In a sequestered cohort of 1,130 patients, the AI system reaches an AUROC of 0.92 for pancreatic cancer detection on CT, compared with 0.88 for 68 radiologists in the reader study.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor of Convergence Medicine

    He is a professor in the Department of Convergence Medicine at Asan Medical Center, with an affiliation in the Department of Radiology there. In July 2026, he is a corresponding author of an npj Digital Medicine study of a seven-stage multi-LLM pipeline built on Gemini models, which produces 6,000 flashcards and 833 infographics for radiology board preparation.

Career

  1. Since 2016Office for Government Policy CoordinationMember, bio-healthcare section
  2. NowAsan FoundationProfessor
  3. 2009–2018University of Ulsan College of MedicineAssistant Research Professor, Assistant Professor

Education

  1. Seoul National UniversityBS, MS, and PhD

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Seoul National University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Seoul National University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Seoul National University. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Seoul National University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Namkug Kim yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. NKim Homepage sites.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. AMC team won the second prize in the universal medical image segmentation decathlon challenge at MICCAI 2018 | About Us-News & Media eng.amc.seoul.kr. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Using AI to Determine Kidney Transplant Rejection within 13 Minutes | About Us-History 2019 eng.amc.seoul.kr. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Deep Learning in Medical Imaging e-neurospine.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Finds a method to screen osteoporosis simply using chest x-ray | About Us-History 2022 eng.amc.seoul.kr. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Emergency triage of brain computed tomography via anomaly detection with a deep generative model | Nature Communications nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Development of an AI-based Clinical Decision Support System for Hepatocellular Carcinoma | About Us-History 2024 eng.amc.seoul.kr. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Artificial intelligence and radiologists in pancreatic cancer detection using standard of care CT scans (PANORAMA): an international, paired, non-inferiority, confirmatory, observational study - the University of Groningen research portal research.rug.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Human-in-the-loop validation of a sequential multi-LLM medical education pipeline | npj Digital Medicine nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.