South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Industrial Technology Association said on March 9 they selected Samsung Electronics senior researcher Choi Jeong-min (최정민) and Hanmi Pharmaceutical head of formulation research Lim Ho-taek (임호택) as winners of the March 2026 Korea Engineer Award.

Choi succeeded in reducing the width and height of the contact area between transistors and wiring by 14 percent and 29 percent, respectively, through an optimised design of wiring structures connected to FinFET, a three-dimensional transistor structure. This secured a low-power semiconductor product with power use down 6 percent and performance improved by at least 3 percent compared with existing processes. Based on 4-nanometre technology, the technology gap versus competitors widened to 1.2 years in 2024 and more than 2 years in 2025.

Lim has devoted about 20 years to research and development of combination and improved drugs in the pharmaceutical field. A range of combination new-drug products that treat both hypertension and dyslipidaemia achieved the top domestic market share in South Korea’s hypertension treatment market from 2020 to 2024. An improved drug for gastroesophageal reflux disease addressed issues of variability in efficacy and ranked first in prescription performance in South Korea’s proton pump inhibitor market from 2021 to 2024.