KAIST

Good afternoon,

It is my great pleasure and privilege to host today’s lunch as the KAIST president. On behalf of KAIST, I would like to welcome all principals and delegates of the 20 science high schools from 12 countries around the world for joining us today.

I also thank the principal of the Korea Science Academy of KAIST, Dr. Yoon Chung, for hosting KSASF 2019 and arranging today’s KAIST visit as a part of its program. I am so pleased that Dr. Chung has demonstrated a great leadership in educating science-talented high school students in our country.

KAIST was established in 1971, less than fifty years ago. At that time, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. GDP per capita for South Korea was around US $300 in 1971, which was lower than that of North Korea at that time.

USAID provided a six-million dollar loan to the South Korean government to create a new graduate institution, KAIST, to educate scientists and engineers who were urgently needed for the fast industrialization of South Korea.

Over the last 50 years, South Korea has achieved miraculous economic development, and I am very proud that KAIST has played a pivotal role in advancing scientific and technological capacities to support the development of the major South Korean industries, including the IT / semiconductor, automobile, and chemical industries.

Around 25% of researchers working in the semiconductor industry in South Korea are KAIST alumni, and 20% of the faculty members at the science and engineering universities in South Korea are also from KAIST. Without KAIST alumni, it would have been difficult to imagine Korea becoming the technological powerhouse that it is today.

In terms of its global reputation, KAIST has also achieved remarkable results. For example, KAIST has been ranked as the most innovative university in the Asia Pacific region by Reuters for three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018 and ranked 11th in the world.

When I was elected as the first alumnus president of KAIST in 2017, I proposed a new vision for KAIST as a ‘Global Value-Creative Leading University’ creating academic, technological, and economical values and eventually creating social value for the prosperity and happiness of the humankind. The core spirits to achieve this vision is Challenge, Creativity, and Caring, so called C3 spirits. With C3 spirits in our mind, KAIST is now innovating its education, research, technology-commercialization and globalization for the era of the 4th IR.

Now, many developing countries are benchmarking KAIST as their role model and we started to reach out them. For instance, KAIST signed with the Kenyan government to establish ‘Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’ last year.

I am very proud that KAIST is the first Korean university that will provide a turn-key based consultancy including educational and architectural design and construction in a foreign country.

I understand that the main theme of KSASF 2019 is “Science and the FUTURE: Dream, Design and Create.” I am sure this theme also meshes with the innovation of KAIST.

As Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” We need to continue our efforts to let our young science and engineering students improve their capacity not only to identify challenging issues, but also to transfer their creative ideas into reality for solving them in the future.

For that, KAIST has begun providing basic AI courses to undergraduate students and we also launched a new AI Graduate School. Starting next year, students will choose a cross-disciplinary track to design their own major with help from our professors. By doing so, I believe students can acquire the ability to shape the future in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

All of us share the same responsibility as educators: to provide innovative education services to talented students to help them become global leaders who will shape, innovate, and move the world.

KAIST takes this responsibility seriously and we will continue our efforts to encourage students to Dream the future, Design new ways of thinking, and Create a great impact for the world.

I am very comfortable stating that KAIST is no longer an institution only for South Korea, but is opening the next chapter of becoming ‘The University for the World’. I hope you too will share this new dream for KAIST and encourage your talented high school students to join this uncharted but valuable journey at KAIST.

Thank you very much.

June 28, 2019