The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Oh Sang-rok) announced that Senior Researcher Sonya S. Kwak of the Center for Intelligence and Interaction received the “SIGCHI Special Recognition Award” from ACM SIGCHI, an academic society in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), at the CHI 2026 international conference held in Barcelona, Spain, on April 15.

Most of the carbon fixed by plants through photosynthesis is ultimately stored in the cell wall, primarily in the form of polysaccharides such as cellulose, xylan, and glucomannan. Yet how plants efficiently synthesize these wall polymers has remained unclear, particularly because polysaccharides such as glucomannan and xylan are prone to aggregation through hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions. A research team comprising Aina Kikuchi, who was then a master’s student in the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Saitama University, Eriko Sato, a master’s student in the same graduate school, Associate Professor Daisuke Takahashi, Professor Toshihisa Kotake, Lecturer Yoshihisa Yoshimi of the Faculty of Biology-Oriented Science and Technology at Kindai University, and Professor Paul Dupree of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge has discovered that mannanases (MANs)—enzymes degrading glucomannan—are also required for normal glucomannan synthesis in plants. The study shows that glucomannan biosynthesis includes an unexpected, previously unrecognized hydrolytic step in the Golgi apparatus.