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KAIST Participates in the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015 in China
KAIST’s president and its professors actively engage in discussions of major issues on higher education, technology innovation, and industry-university collaboration with global leaders from across all sectors.
President Steve Kang of KAIST participated in the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015 (a.k.a., Summer Davos Forum) hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). With the theme of “Charting a New Course for Growth,” the Summer Davos Forum took place on September 9-11, 2015 in, Dalian, China.
Currently, KAIST is a member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) of WEF, a gathering of the presidents of the top 25 universities in the world, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Tokyo, University of Oxford, Peking University, and National University of Singapore. GULF allows university leaders an opportunity to have high-level dialogues on higher education and research and explore prospects for cooperative ventures.
President Kang led the discussion of the GULF session at the Summer Davos Forum, which was held on September 10, 2015, with 25 university leaders as well as two business leaders from Chinese companies: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., and Sanofi China. The participants shared candid perspectives on industry-university collaboration, particularly the need for such partnerships in Asia.
In addition, KAIST hosted the fourth IdeasLab session, entitled “Bio versus Nano Materials, on September 9, 2015. At the session, four KAIST professors held an in-depth debate and discussion with the audience on whether the next industrial revolution would be driven by advances in biomaterials or nanomaterials.
The topics under discussion were:
- New materials that mimic biology by Professor Hea Shin Lee
- Bio-based materials that replace petroleum-based materials by Professor Sang Yup Lee
- New materials designed at sub-nano scale by Professor Hee Tae Jung
- A hydrogen economy with nanomaterials by Professor Eun Ae Cho
Since its establishment in 2007, the Summer Davos Forum has become the biggest business and political gathering in Asia, held annually either in Dalian or Tianjin, China. The Forum has attracted more than 1,500 participants primarily from emerging nations such as China, India, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil, and has offered an open platform to address issues important to the region and the global community.
2015.09.14 View 7618 -
Professor Jeong Ho Lee Receives the 2015 Pediatric Epilepsies Research Award
The award identifies leading scientists worldwide and funds their cutting-edge research in epilepsy.
The Citizen United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) announced on September 7, 2015, that Jeong Ho Lee, a professor of the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering at KAIST, will be awarded the 2015 Pediatric Epilepsies Research Award.
The Pediatric Epilepsies Research Award is given annually to a researcher who has conducted novel, innovative research projects that address severe, intractable pediatric epilepsies as well as collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that explore new approaches to find a treatment for pediatric epilepsies.
Lee was recognized for his leading study in the field of intractable epilepsy. He is the first Korean who has ever received this award, securing a research grant of USD 250,000 for two years.
Lee has conducted research on brain somatic mutations as the novel cause of childhood intractable epilepsy. Pediatric epilepsies account for approximately 70% of all cases of epilepsy.
Established in 1998, CURE is a non-profit American organization based in Chicago, Illinois, which is committed to funding research and various initiatives that will lead to breakthroughs to cure epilepsy.
Since its inception, CURE has been at the forefront of epilepsy research, raising more than USD 32 million to support researchers and scientists worldwide. It has also awarded more than 180 cutting-edge projects in 13 countries.
2015.09.09 View 10399 -
KAIST's Student Job Fair 2015
KAIST’s Undergraduate Student Council and Graduate Student Council jointly hosted the 2015 KAIST Job Fair on September 2-3, 2015 at the Sports Complex on campus.
The Job Fair took place for the sixth time this year. Forty-three companies, including some of the largest ones in Korea such as Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK Construction, Hankook Tires, as well as those owned by KAIST graduates, have participated.
The Job Fair specialized in three fields: information technology (IT) and electronic and mechanical engineering. The event included one-to-one employment counseling between human resources managers and students, mock interviews, employment orientations, job consulting, interview makeup lessons, resume writing and photo-shooting, etc.
The international students who attended the event received information packages on employment from the participating companies.
This event was open not only to KAIST students but also to students from other universities in the local community, offering more job opportunities to a wider range of people.
Last year alone, a total of 1,200 people including KAIST students and graduates joined the KAIST’s Job Fair.
2015.09.04 View 5683 -
KAIST's Research Team Receives the Best Paper Award from the IEEE Transaction on Power Electronics
A research team led by Professor Chun T. Rim of the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has received the First Prize Papers Award from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL), a peer-reviewed journal that covers fundamental technologies used in the control and conversion of electric power.
A total of three research papers received this award in 2015.
Each year, TPEL’s editors select three best papers among those published in the journal during the preceding calendar year. In 2014, the TPEL published 579 papers. Professor Rim’s paper was picked out as one of the three papers published last year for the First Prize Papers Award.
Entitled “Generalized Active EMF (electromagnetic field) Cancel Methods for Wireless Electric Vehicles (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6684288&tag=1),” the paper proposed, for the first time in the world, three generalized design methods for cancelling the total EMF generated from wireless electric vehicles. This technology, researchers said, can be applied to any wireless power transfer systems.
The award ceremony will be held at the upcoming conference of the 2015 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo in September in Montreal, Canada.
2015.08.27 View 9002 -
Nature Biotechnology Nominates Sang Yup Lee of KAIST for Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014
Nature Biotechnology, recognized as the most prestigious journal in the field of biotechnology, has released today its list of the Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014. Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ranked seventh in the list. He is the only Asian researcher listed.
The journal, in partnership with IP Checkups, a patent analytics firm, presents an annual ranking of researchers based on their paper and patent output. The list includes, among others, each researcher’s most-cited patent in the past five years and their H index, a measurement to evaluate the impact of a researcher’s published work utilizing citation analysis. (More details can be found at http://www.nature.com/bioent/2015/150801/full/bioe.2015.9.html.)
American institutions made up the majority of the list, with 18 universities and research institutes, and the remainder was filled by KAIST in Korea and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia.
Globally known as a leading researcher in systems metabolic engineering, Professor Lee has published more than 500 journal papers and 580 patents. He has received many awards, including the Citation Classic Award, Elmer Gaden Award, Merck Metabolic Engineering Award, ACS Marvin Johnson Award, SIMB Charles Thom Award, POSCO TJ Park Prize, Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award, and the Ho Am Prize in Engineering.
2015.08.27 View 9036 -
KAIST holds the 2015 KAIST-MIT-Technion International Symposium on Nano Science
The 2015 KAIST-MIT-Technion International Symposium on Nano Science was held on August 11, 2015 at the KAIST campus. The event took place under three subtopics: Materials for Production and Storage of Renewable Energy, Functional Materials, and Multiferroic Materials.
The joint symposium invited more than 300 experts in material science and engineering including ten speakers and panelists. From MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Professors Harry L. Tuller and Geoffrey S. Beach in the Department of Material Engineering, as well as Professor Gregory Rutledge in the Department of Chemical Engineering joined the symposium. Professor Avner Rothschild in the Department of Material Engineering and Professor Yair Ein-Eli in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Technion Institute of Technology in Israel also participated.
From KAIST, Professors Il-Doo Kim, Byong-Guk Park, and Yeon-Sik Jung in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Chan-Ho Yang in the Department of Physics, and Professor Doh-Chang Lee in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering spoke at the event. The list of topics included “Next Generation Lithium-Air Battery,” “Nano Materials for High Performance Energy Storage System,” and “Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Photoelectrode for the Conversion and Storage of Solar Energy.”
In its efforts to promote cooperation among the three universities, KAIST plans to send six students to MIT and one student to Technion for joint research.
Professor Il-Doo Kim, who organized the symposium said, “We believe this kind of international gathering will serve as an opportunity for scholars from leading universities to share their expertise in material science and help them better understand on the recent trends in nanoscience and its related technology.”
2015.08.12 View 7431 -
KAIST Develops Fiber-Like Light-Emitting Diodes for Wearable Displays
Professor Kyung-Cheol Choi and his research team from the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST have developed fiber-like light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which can be applied in wearable displays. The research findings were published online in the July 14th issue of Advanced Electronic Materials.
Traditional wearable displays were manufactured on a hard substrate, which was later attached to the surface of clothes. This technique had limited applications for wearable displays because they were inflexible and ignored the characteristics of fabric.
To solve this problem, the research team discarded the notion of creating light-emitting diode displays on a plane. Instead, they focused on fibers, a component of fabrics, and developed a fiber-like LED that shared the characteristics of both fabrics and displays.
The essence of this technology, the dip-coating process, is to immerse and extract a three dimensional (3-D) rod (a polyethylene terephthalate fiber) from a solution, which functions like thread. Then, the regular levels of organic materials are formed as layers on the thread.
The dip-coating process allows the layers of organic materials to be easily created on the fibers with a 3-D cylindrical structure, which had been difficult in existing processes such as heat-coating process. By controlling of the withdrawal rate of the fiber, the coating's thickness can also be adjusted to the hundreds of thousandths of a nanometer.
The researchers said that this technology would accelerate the commercialization of fiber-based wearable displays because it offers low-cost mass production using roll-to-roll processing, a technology applied to create electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastics or metal foils.
Professor Choi said, “Our research will become a core technology in developing light emitting diodes on fibers, which are fundamental elements of fabrics. We hope we can lower the barrier of wearable displays entering the market.”
The lead author of the published paper, Seon-Il Kwon, added, “This technology will eventually allow the production of wearable displays to be as easy as making clothes.”
Picture 1: The Next Generation Wearable Display Using Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes
Picture 2: Dip-Coating Process to Create Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes
Picture 3: Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes
2015.08.11 View 12664 -
President Steve Kang of KAIST Receives the Outstanding Contribution Award from the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association
The Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA), a non-profit Korean professional organization based in the United States with over 6,000 registered members, bestowed upon President Steve Kang of KAIST the 2015 Outstanding Contribution Award.
The award is presented to a person who has made significant contributions to the development of KSEA.
The award ceremony took place during the 2015 US-Korea Conference on Science, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (UKC), which was held on July 30, 2015, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.
The UKC is the flagship conference of KSEA, which takes place every year, and covers science, engineering, technology, industry, entrepreneurship, and leadership. It attracts more than 1,200 participants from the US and Korea. The UKC 2015 was held on July 29-August 1, 2015.
President Kang has participated in UKC conferences over the past few years as a plenary speaker, addressing major issues in science and technology for both nations, and provided generous support for the activities of UKC and KSEA. He also promoted discussions and exchanges of professional knowledge in his field, microelectronics, by organizing fora and symposia.
He addressed the UKC 2015 as a plenary speaker with a speech entitled “Pursuing Excellence with a Servant’s Heart.” President Kang said that good leadership should bring out synergistic contributions from all constituents and achieve excellence under all circumstances. He mentioned one example of good leadership, known as humble leadership, and explained how such leadership played an important role in the development of scientific breakthroughs, such as the world’s premier high-end microprocessor chip sets first produced by his team under extremely high pressure.
2015.08.05 View 6646 -
Dr. Se-Jung Kim Receives the Grand Prize at the International Photo and Image Contest on Light
Dr. Se-Jung Kim of the Physics Department at KAIST received the Grand Prize at the 2015 Photo and Image Contest of the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.
The United Nations has designated the year 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.
The Optical Society of Korea celebrated the UN’s designation by hosting an international photo and image contest on the theme of light and optics related technology.
Dr. Kim presented a photo of images taken from a liquid crystal, which was entitled “A Micro Pinwheel.” She took pictures of liquid crystal images with a polarizing microscope and then colored the pictures. The liquid crystal has self-assembled circle domain structures, and each domain can form vortex optics. Her adviser for the project is Professor Yong-Hoon Cho of the Physics Department.
Her work was exhibited during the annual conference of the Optical Society of Korea, which was held on July 13-15, 2015 at Gyeong-Ju Hwabaek International Convention Center. It will also be exhibited at the National Science Museum in Gwacheon and the Kim Dae-Jung Convention Center in Gwangju.
Picture: A Micro Pinwheel
2015.07.31 View 8737 -
Affordable Genetic Diagnostic Technique for Target DNA Analysis Developed
Professor Hyun-Gyu Park of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST has developed a technique to analyze various target DNAs using an aptamer, a DNA fragment that can recognize and bind to a specific protein or enzyme. This technique will allow the development of affordable genetic diagnoses for new bacteria or virus, such as Middle Ease Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The research findings were published in the June issue of Chemical Communications, issued by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom. The paper was selected as a lead article of the journal.
The existing genetic diagnosis technique, based on molecular beacon probes, requires a new beacon probe whenever a target DNA mutates. As a result, it was costly to analyze various target DNA fragments. To address this problem, Professor Park’s team designed an aptamer that binds and deactivates DNA polymerase. The technique was used in reverse, so that the aptemer did not bind to the polymerase, maintaining its activated state, only if the target DNA was present. These probes are called TagMan probes.
The controlled activation and deactivation of DNA polymerase enables nucleic acid to elongate or dwindle, making it possible to measure fluorescence signals coming from TaqMan probes. This same probe can be used to detect various target DNAs, leading to the development of a new and sensitive genetic diagnostic technique.
Unlike the existing molecular beacon probe technique which requires a new probe for every target DNA, this new technique uses the same fluorescent TaqMan probe, which is cheaper and easier to detect a number of different target nucleic acid fragments. The application of this technique will make the process of identifying and detecting foreign DNAs from pathogens such as virus and bacteria more affordable and simple.
Professor Park said, “This technique will enable us to develop simpler diagnostic kits for new pathogens, such as MERS, allowing a faster response to various diseases. Our technology can also be applied widely in the field of genetic diagnostics.”
Picture: A schematic image of target nucleic acid extracted through the activation and deactivation of DNA polymerase
2015.07.31 View 9676 -
A Technology Holding Company Establishes Two Companies Based on Technologies Developed at KAIST
Mirae Holdings is a technology holding company created by four science and technology universities, KAIST, DIGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology), GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology), and UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology) in 2014 to commercialize the universities’ research achievements. The company identifies promising technologies for commercialization, makes business plans, establishes venture capitals, and invests in startup companies.
Over the past year, Mirae Holdings has established two venture companies based on the technologies developed at KAIST. In September 2014, it founded Cresem Inc., a company used the anisotropic conductive film (ACF) bonding technology, which was developed by Professor Kyung-Wook Paik of the Material Science and Engineering Department at KAIST. Cresem provides a technology to bond electronic parts ultrasonically. The company is expected to have 860,000 USD worth of sales within the first year of its launching.
Last June, Mirae Holdings created another company, Doctor Kitchen, with the technology developed by Professor Gwan-Su Yi of the Bio and Brain Engineering Department at KAIST. Doctor Kitchen supplies precooked food, which helps diabetic patients regulate their diet. The company offers a personalized diet plan to customers so that they can effectively manage their disease and monitor their blood sugar level efficiently.
The Chief Executive Officer of Mirae Holdings, Young-Ho Kim, said, “We can assist KAIST researchers who aspire to create a company based on their research outcomes through various stages of startup services such as making business plans, securing venture capitals, and networking with existing businesses.”
Young-Ho Kim (left in the picture), the Chief Executive Officer of Mirae Holdings, holds a certificate of company registration with Sang-Min Oh (right in the picture), the Chief Executive Officer of Cresem.
Young-Ho Kim (left in the picture), the Chief Executive Officer of Mirae Holdings, holds a certificate of company registration with Jae-Yeun Park (right in the picture), the Chief Executive Officer of Dr. Kitchen.
2015.07.29 View 11158 -
International Undergraduate Conference ICISTS-KAIST 2015 and ICISTS-KAIST Public Colloquium Held on August 3, 2015 at KAIST
The ICISTS-KAIST 2015, an international conference organized by a student organization called the International Conference for the Integration of Science, Technology, and Society at KAIST, was held from August 3rd to 7th at the KAIST campus and ICC Hotel in Daejeon. This year’s conference theme was “Shaping the Future.” Over 300 undergraduate students from more than 20 countries joined the event. The conference offered opportunities to explore emerging issues in science and technology, particularly in the fields of robotics, medicine, and science communication.
Vitalic Buterin, a rising scientist who received the 2014 World Technology Award for his development of the Ethereum Project, and Alan Irwin, a renowned scholar in science communication at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, were invited as keynote speakers. The list of other speakers included Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, the Director and Co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network; Wendell Wallach, a scholar at Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics; and Hideto Nakajima, a professor at the Department of History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science and Technology at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
As part of the ICISTS-KAIST 2015, ICISTS also hosted a public colloquium on August 5, 2015 at the Science Hall in Daejeon National Science Museum. Ko San, the Director of TIDE Institute; Hyo-Joon Woo, the Chief Executive Officer of Fransen; and Dong-Il Jung, the Chief Executive Officer of iDrone participated as the speakers.
2015.07.29 View 6796