KAIST

Hello everyone.

I am so pleased to welcome you all once again after only two months.

Thank you to our distinguished speakers, colleagues, and audience from around the world for virtually joining us today.

My special thanks to Prime Minister Sye-kyun Chung for being with us again following his inspiring message at the inaugural forum in March.

I also would like to thank Director Joung-Ho Kim, Professor Hoon Sohn, and the GSI staff members for organizing this event so successfully.

Despite every nation’s best efforts over the past half year, the world is experiencing the second wave of the Covid-19. These are very challenging times.

In this critical juncture, I am very honored to host these world-renowned speakers in the medical and bio-engineering field at this forum.

At this forum, we will explore new strategies for innovations in science and bio-engineering for containing Covid-19.

We will share our visions and insights on the future of humanity and how we can overcome the diseases with medical and bio-engineering breakthroughs and extend life expectancies.

Furthermore, this forum will present a diverse array of insights and policy visions for addressing infectious diseases, aging, and rare diseases that humanity has long experienced in an attempt to pursue a better quality of life.

I would like to thank all the distinguished speakers, especially Dr. Victor Dzau, President of the US National Academy of Medicine for joining us online.

Dr. Dzau is well known for his initiatives for the Global Health Risk Framework for the Future and Human Gene Editing Initiative, both critical for the success of medical and healthcare policies around the world.

Futurist Thomas Frey from the DaVinci Institute has inspired us with his deep insights into the prediction of future technology and human lives. I look forward to his predictions on the future after Covid-19 and how the world will be transformed.

Professor George McDonald Church from Harvard Medical School is a pioneering geneticist in the fields of personal genomics and synthetic biology. He first developed the direct genomic sequencing method in 1984. He has significantly contributed to the sequencing of genomes and interpreting genome data in synthetic biology and genome engineering.

We also have Senior Vice President and CPO (Chief Product Officer) Susan Tousi from Illumina, a leading global genome sequencing solution provider. She is joining us to share her vision regarding next-generation sequencing and how it will affect our lives.

Professor Kwang-Soo Kim from Harvard Medical School, a KAIST alumnus, recently reported new discoveries for Parkinson’s disease treatment, reprogramming a patient’s own skin cells to replace cells in the brain.

We also have very promising young scientists and investigators at the sessions from KAIST and around the world who will talk on future innovation strategies for healthcare and biotechnology.

Distinguished guests,

We are living in this new normal, a time full of uncertainties. The one thing for sure is that only the advancement of science and technology will deliver us from this crisis. Only medical breakthroughs can help us regain our high quality of life.

We all know that unwavering innovations in the research sector and global collaborations will realize these breakthroughs.

How to improve life quality and benefit humanity are longstanding research topics that KAIST is pursuing.

KAIST already launched the post-Covid R&D initiative in May. This is our innovative ‘science new deal’ that will drive new growth engines in the biomedical and healthcare industries.

For this new deal initiative, KAIST will concentrate on antivirus technologies, infectious disease-related big data management, and non-contact service platforms as key future R&D areas.

A number of KAIST’s inimitable medical researchers and bio-engineers are also making significant progresses in anti-virus and bio-engineering research. And I look forward many global collaborations with our researchers bearing fruits very soon.

This global pandemic crisis has pushed us to make a revolution in medical and bio-engineering disciplines and has opened a new chapter for human healthcare.

I hope this forum will serve as another opportunity to accelerate the advancement of medical and bio-engineering breakthroughs to benefit all of humanity.

Thank you once again to all the participants online around the world.

September 9, 2020

Sung-Chul Shin
President of KAIST