Daegu University research institute wins prize at national humanities and social sciences competition

The Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation Science at Daegu University won an excellence award in the social sciences category of the 2026 National Humanities and Social Sciences Research Impact Competition, hosted by the National Research Foundation of Korea, the university announced Monday.

The award ceremony was held Thursday at Chungnam National University, in conjunction with the opening of the 2026 Fifth World Humanities and Social Sciences Conference.

The winning research was titled "Building a 24-Hour Education and Care Support System for People with Developmental Disabilities Based on AIoT."

Through the National Research Foundation's Global Humanities and Social Sciences Convergence Research Support Project, the institute combined an AI system — called B-Mon — that uses cameras and IoT sensors to automatically detect challenging behaviors, with an integrated platform called DACARE, establishing a cyclical care framework.

The team developed an AI model trained on tens of thousands of behavioral video clips and demonstrated its effectiveness across multiple institutions, showing reductions in challenging behaviors and improvements in functional communication.

The research has been selected for two consecutive years for the Ministry of Education's Academic Research Support Project "Top 50 Outstanding Achievements," and its core content has been officially launched as a course on K-MOOC, the national lifelong learning portal.

The work has also served as the operational basis for North Gyeongsang Province's support projects for people with developmental disabilities, and has expanded into effective policy and cooperative governance through patent applications and MOUs with multiple institutions.

"This achievement is significant because it did not stop at research — it contributed to real change in the lives of people with developmental disabilities, their families, and educators alike," said Park Gyeong-ok, director of the Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation Science.

Meanwhile, Park, who led the research, took office Wednesday as the new president of the Korean Society of Special Education, the country's leading academic organization in the field. She plans to lead the society for the next two years, focusing on promoting equity in special education in the AI era and strengthening collaboration among members.