Good morning everyone.
It’s so nice to welcome all of you to Jeju Island. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Especially, I am very grateful to the foreign participants who flew all the way to Jeju Island.
I would like to congratulate and thank Professor Kyung-soo Kim, Dean of the Cho Chun Sik Graduate School of Green Transportation, the organizing committee, and the faculty and staff members who put their time and effort into hosting this event.
This symposium will explore opportunities and challenges for future mobility. You will share vision, ideas, and new technologies that will shape our new future. Transportation has provided mobility for humankind, and its technologies have been continuously evolving.
Future mobility reflects autonomous driving, a shared economy, smart vehicles, and human-machine interactions. Especially, smart vehicles are a new growth engine of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Recent vehicular technologies are facing revolutionary changes fueled by autonomous driving and electric vehicles. In order to cope with these rapid changes, all the global OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and suppliers as well as IT (information technology) companies are investing massive amounts of resources into future mobility technologies.
The market is growing, but also changing very quickly. It is said that the global market for autonomous vehicles will grow from 42 billion US dollars in 2025 to 77 billion US dollars by 2035 (according to the BCG).
KAIST took the lead in the future mobility field decades ago. The Cho Chun Sik Green Transportation Graduate School has played a crucial role in developing green transportation technologies including online electric vehicles.
Last year, we opened the Center for Eco-Friendly and Smart Vehicles Research in Jeju Island in collaboration with the JDC (Jeju Free International City Development Center). This center also runs the Autonomous Electric Vehicle Industry Incubating Center.
I would like to recognize our partnership with the Jeju government, which is advocating for a zero-carbon emission policy. This is a very good example of triple helix collaboration among university-industry-government to establish new eco-systems for startups and job creation. In collaboration with the JDC, our research center has already built an “EV Factory” which will serve as a testbed and technology hub for smart automobiles and electric vehicles.
I am quite sure that Jeju Island will become a global hub for the smart and green mobility industries in the coming years. The International Symposium on Future Mobility 2019 will serve as an opportunity to discuss future mobility technologies as well as to build strong collaborations between your organizations and our community.
Before closing my speech, I would like to take this opportunity to briefly introduce KAIST especially for the foreign participants.
KAIST was established in 1971, when Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Back then, the GDP per capita was about 300 US$. KAIST was missioned to educate scientists and engineers who were urgently needed for the rapid industrialization and scientific advancement of Korea.
KAIST has fulfilled its mission passionately and faithfully, thus far producing over 64,000 graduates, including 13,000 Ph.Ds. Our alumni have played pivotal roles in Korea’s remarkable economic growth and produced countless scientific and technological innovations over the past half-century.
For an instance, 25% of Ph.D. workforces in the Korean semiconductor industry, dominating the global market, are KAIST graduates. 25% of Ph.D. researchers working in the national research institutes and 20% of S&E faculty in the Korean universities are KAIST graduates.
KAIST has been the gateway to the innovations and advances in Korean science and technology. We have stayed ahead of education and research to identify the most challenging and emerging fields.
When I became the president of KAIST two years ago, I have launched the Vision 2031 for KAIST, a blueprint for becoming a global leading university that creates new knowledge with a global impact.
For that, international collaboration is essential. This symposium reflects one of our efforts to achieve the vision. As the president, I am going to strongly support any kind of the international collaboration, in particular, research cooperation with leading scholars around the world.
Well, I hope all of you enjoy the program and have a productive and inspiring time on Jeju Island.
Thank you very much.
November 11, 2019
Sung-Chul Shin
President of KAIST