KAIST

President Sung-Chul Shin attended the ‘World Economic Forum (WEF) Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) Community Meeting’ on January 12.

GULF is a community comprised of the presidents of the world’s top 29 universities, and KAIST is the only Korean university invited as a member.

The meeting started with an introduction to “The New Economy and Society Platform” by the WEF, followed by the member universities’ presentations on their major issues in 2021, and a discussion about the future activities of GULF.

President Shin gave a presentation on how KAIST turned the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for educational innovations.

“We were able to successfully run fully online courses in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis, thanks to the Education 4.0 System we had already built and had been using. It is a flipped learning system where online and offline education are fused together,” President Shin explained.

“KAIST has also been helping teachers from schools in the local area run their online classes smoothly, and have expanded on its Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to improve educational services for the general public in both quality and quantity,” he continued.

“KAIST is also expanding on both online and offline ‘reskilling’ and ‘upskilling’ education centered around Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies for not only the general public but also for professionals in their fields,” President Shin added.

As notable cases, he mentioned the establishment of a program for talent cultivation in semiconductors for enterprises, the ‘Digital Finance Master’s Program’ aimed to develop experts in finance with knowledge on AI and big data, as well as the establishment of the Korea AI Manufacturing Platform (KAMP.AI) to intellectualize small manufacturing firms.

In particular, President Shin emphasized that “to solve educational disparities caused by COVID-19 and accelerate the innovation of university education online, GULF’s role is very important.” As a means to realize this, he suggested establishing the tentatively named ‘GULF MOOC Consortium’ where GULF members can all participate, and the suggestion was well-received.

The presidents of GULF member universities agreed that they must demonstrate leadership to re-establish the role of universities through reskilling and expanding online education, continuing to make innovative scientific advancements to solve humanity’s common problems like socioeconomic disparities and climate change, strengthening the level of education in fields related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution technology like data science and AI, carrying out innovative research to overcome the pandemic crisis, as well as facilitating industry-academic collaborations and cooperation with the civil society.

The ‘GULF Community Meeting’ was attended online by President Shin, President Akira Haseyama of Keio University, President Makoto Gonokami of the University of Tokyo, President Tan Eng Chye of NUS, President Subra Suresh of NTU, President Wei Shyy of HKUST, President Joel Mesot of ETH Zurich, President Martin Vetterli of EPFL, Managing Director of the WEF Saadia Zahidi, and Jaci Eisenberg of the GULF secretariat.

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