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JETS Conference 2017
KAIST and four science and technology research universities in Korea co-hosted a technology start-up fair, the 2017 JETS (Job, Exhibition, Tech Forum, and Startup) Conference January 19 ~20 in the Ryu Geun-chul Sports Complex at KAIST.
Korea’s major science and technology research universities, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech), and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), held the event in a collaborative effort to educate, inspire, and connect young entrepreneurs, especially those who will launch technology start-ups.
The conference brought entrepreneurs and innovators together who seek ways of working with and supporting start-ups and for their sustainable growth. It also drew aspiring young students and researchers from universities and the government-funded research institutions who are in the process of commercializing their technology. Students from each university’s industry-academia cooperation program who incubated their technology and ideas were key contributors.
At the Tech Forum, entrepreneurship and technology consultation specialists including Joe Jasin, managing director at DNA Investment Partners in the US, the founder of Cyworld Dong-Hyung Lee, and Professor Hawoong Jeong, a complex bio-network specialist from the Department of Physics of KAIST lectured on the ecosystem of start-ups and its trends and development.
The Dean of University-Industry Cooperation at KAIST Joongmyeon Bae said, "We organized this event in collaboration with four major research universities to further encourage technology start-ups from young students and help their ideas and technology bear fruit. We will continue to strive to create an ecosystem of start-ups which works efficiently.”
(Above photo: Founder of the Cyworld, Dong-Hyung Lee gives a lecture at the Tech Forum. Below photo: Students visit exhibition booth of each participating institution.)
2017.01.20 View 10109 -
KAIST Joins IoF 2020 with 'Oliot'
KAIST will take part in the Internet of Food & Farm 2020 (IoF 2020) project with its international standard IoT open source platform ‘Oliot’ (Open Language for the Internet of Things, http://oliot.org), developed by a research team under Professor Daeyoung Kim from the School of Computing. Dr. Kim is also the director at the Auto-ID Labs at KAIST (http://autoidlabs.org).
IoF 2020 is a project to provide solutions and facilitate the large-scale uptake of IoT by addressing the organizational and technological challenges the European farming and food sectors face today. The project will develop innovative IoT solutions by fostering co-creation in interactive improvement cycles focusing on user acceptability and business models to boost technology and market-readiness levels.
Along with 71 partners from 16 countries, Professor Kim’s ‘Oliot’ will play a part in creating an ecosystem for providing safe and healthy agrifood, incorporating ICT(information and communications technologies) into the areas of smart farms and the agrifood service sector over the next four years. The project received €30 million in funding from Horizon 2020, the largest research and innovation program in the EU. KAIST is the only Korean institution to participate in this project.
For the project, Professor Kim’s team will initially establish smart farm and food service testbeds for the domestic agrifood industry with ‘Oliot’ prior to connecting to the European one. Professor Kim said he will leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deep learning in order to analyze the data collected from the ecosystems in the EU. He aims to open an integrated IoT platform system incorporated with AI technologies to serve governments, institutions, corporations, and farmers.
It is expected that technologies developed for IoF 2020 will also benefit the domestic agrifood market and its supply chain infrastructure. Oliot will also be expected to further advance domestic smart industries including health care and connected vehicles.
George Beers, project manager at Wageningen University & Research and the IoF 2020 project coordinator said, “IoF 2020 has the potential to transform the paradigm of the supply chain of agrifood from the farm to consumers’ dining tables. We believe this project will contribute to enhance European competitiveness and excellence in the food commerce industry.”
Professor Kim said, “Technological applications of international standard IoT have already started in the domestic agrifood industry in collaboration with KAIST. We are working now with Asian and South American countries, as well as European nations, for the integration of a global agrifood business ecosystem.”
Auto-ID Labs are a global research consortium of seven academic institutions that research and develop new technologies for advancing global commerce, partnering with GS1 (Global Standard 1), a non-profit organization that established standards for global commerce such as introducing barcodes to the retail industry. The Auto-ID Labs include MIT, University of Cambridge, Keio University, Fudan University, and ETH Zurich/University of St. Gallen as well as KAIST.
2017.01.18 View 6947 -
Adsorbent That Can Selectively Remove Water Contaminants
Professor Cafer T. Yavuz and his team at the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water, and Sustainability (EEWS) have developed an adsorbent that can selectively capture soluble organic contaminants in water.
This water treatment adsorbent is a fluorine-based nanoporous polymer that can selectively remove water-soluble micromolecules. It has the added advantage of being cheap and easily synthesized, while also being renewable.
The results of this research have been published online in Nature Communication on November 10, 2016. The research paper is titled “Charge-specific Size-dependent Separation of Water-soluble Organic Molecules by Fluorinated Nanoporous Networks.” (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13377)
Water pollution is accelerating as a result of global industrial development and warming. As new materials are produced and applied in the agricultural and industrial sectors, the types of contaminants expelled as sewage and waste water are also becoming diverse.
Chemicals such as dyes and pesticides can be especially harmful because they are made up of small and highly soluble organic particles that cannot be completely removed during the water treatment process, ultimately ending up in our drinking water.
The current conventional water treatment systems utilize processes such as activated carbon, ozonolysis, and reverse osmosis membrane. These processes, however, are designed to remove larger organic molecules with lower solubility, thus removal of very small molecules with high solubility is difficult. In addition, these micromolecules tend to be charged, therefore are less easily separated in aqueous form.
The research team aimed to remove these small molecules using a new adsorbent technology.
In order to remove aqueous organic molecular contaminants, the team needed an adsorbent that can adsorb micro-sized molecules. It also needed to introduce a chemical function that would allow it to selectively adsorb molecules, and lastly, the adsorbent needed to be structurally stable as it would be used underwater.
The team subsequently developed an adsorbent of fluorine-based porous organic polymer that met all the conditions listed above. By controlling the size of the pores, this adsorbent is able to selectively adsorb aqueous micromolecules of less than 1-2 nm in size.
In addition, in order to separate specific contaminants, there should be a chemical functionality, such as the ability to strongly interact with the target material. Fluorine, the most electronegative atom, interacts strongly with charged soluble organic molecules.
The research team incorporated fluorine into an adsorbent, enabling it to separate charged organic molecules up to 8 times faster than neutral molecules.
The adsorbent developed by Professor Yavuz’s team has wide industrial applications. It can be used in batch-adsorption tests, as well as in column separation for size- and charge-specific adsorption.
Professor Yavuz stated that “the charge-selective properties displayed by fluorine has the potential to be applied in desalination or water treatment processes using membranes."
This paper was first-authored by Dr. Jeehye Byun, and the research was funded by KAIST’s High Risk High Return Program and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning of Korea’s Mid-Career Researcher Program, as well as its Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Change.
Figure 1. Diagram conceptualizing the process of charge- and size-specific separation by the fluorine-based porous polymer adsorbent
Figure 2. Difference in absorbance before and after using a porous fluorine polymer column to separate organic molecules
Figure 3. Adsorption properties of a fluorine polymer according to the charge and size of organic molecules
2017.01.17 View 9368 -
Nobel Laureate Dr. John Michael Kosterlitz Speaks at KAIST
KAIST’s Department of Physics will invite one of three co-recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016, Professor John Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University, on January 9, 2017, to speak about the exotic states of matter, which is entitled “Topological Defects and Phase Transitions.”
Professor Kosterlitz shares the Nobel award with two other researchers, David Thouless and Duncan Haldane. He is considered one of the pioneers in the field of topological phases. In the early 1970s, along with Thouless, he demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and explained the mechanism behind, phase transition, that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures.
Over the last decade, topological materials and their applications have been widely studied with the hope of using them in new generations of electronics and superconductors, or in future quantum computers. Details of the lecture follow below:
Distinguished Lecture Series by KAIST’s Physics Department
· Speaker: Professor John Michael Kosterlitz of the Physics Department,
Brown University
· Topic: “Topological Defects and Phase Transitions”
· Date: January 9, 2017, 4:00 PM
· Place: Lecture Hall (#1501), College of Natural Sciences (E6-2)
2017.01.06 View 6339 -
KAIST Ph.D. Candidate Wins the Next Generation of Engineers Award
Joo-Sung Kim, a doctoral student at the EEWS (Environment, Energy, Water and Sustainability) Graduate School won the inaugural Next Generation of Engineers Award in Leadership on December 14, 2016.
The National Academy of Engineering of Korea hosts this award to support creative and ambitious students who have the potential to become leaders in engineering and who will serve as role models for future Korean engineers. Based on the recommendations of university professors in engineering and members of the academy, seven students are selected for the award in the categories of leadership and entrepreneurship.
With his research focus on the development of high-performance, next-generation secondary cells for wearable devices such as smart watches, health bands, and smart eyewear, Joo-Sung created a startup, Lithium-ion Battery Energy Science and Technology (LiBEST), Inc. He plans to base his company at the Office of University and Industry Cooperation, KAIST, where he can receive assistance for launching the mass-production system for his technology.
His adviser, Professor Jang-Wook Choi of the EEWS Graduate School, noted, “Joo-Sung has been a great student who has a strong sense of curiosity and perseverance. The award is the by-product of his hard work.”
“I have always enjoyed my work and study as a researcher, but eventually would like to expand my career into business based on the results of my research. It would be wonderful if I could become a businessman like Elon Musk, Masayoshi Son, or Ma Yun and create a role model for aspiring engineers in Korea by combining science and technology with business demand to create social values that benefit many people,” Joo-Young said.
2016.12.26 View 8878 -
EEWS Graduate School Team Receives the S-Oil Best Paper Award
Professor Hyungjun Kim and Dr. He-Young Shin from the EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability) Graduate School at KAIST received the Best Paper Award in Chemistry from S-Oil, a Korean petroleum and refinery company, on November 29, 2016.
Established in 2011, the S-Oil Best Paper Awards are bestowed annually upon ten young scientists in the fields of five basic sciences: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. The scientists are selected at the recommendation of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and the Association of Korean Universities. The awards grant a total of USD 230,000 for research funding.
Dr. Shin, the lead author of the awarded research paper, said, “My research interest has been catalyst studies based on theoretical chemistry. I am pleased to accept this award that will support my studies, and will continue to research catalyst design that can predict parameters and integrate them into catalytic systems.”
Professor Hyungjun Kim (left) and Dr. He-Young Shin (right)
2016.12.23 View 8342 -
Professor Dongman Lee Wins the 2016 Korea Internet Award
Professor Dongman Lee of KAIST’s School of Computing received the 11th Korea Internet Award in the category of personal achievement on December 13 at the Creative Economy and Innovation Center in Gyeonggi province.
Hosted by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning of Korea, the Internet Award recognizes leaders in the Internet industry and their contributions.
Since 2010, Professor Lee has conducted research on the Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, resulting in the publication of five research papers in Science Citation Index (SCI) journals, ten papers in Korean journals, 30 best papers nominations at international conferences, and the registration of eleven patents. He has also worked on the creation of an IoT ecosystem through his research on object interworking platforms that can provide diverse user-customized services in the IoT environment.
His research team built a test bed for applicable IoT platforms on the 8th floor of the IT Convergence Center on campus to implement experiments and collect various data, thereby creating a foundation to carry out research projects in this field.
Professor Lee has helped the advancement of an Internet governance system in Korea by researching Internet governance policies, holding important posts in related academic societies including the Chairman of the Korea Internet Governance Alliance (KIGA) Council, and hosting major conferences such as the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF).
2016.12.20 View 7088 -
Professor Ih Reappointed as Vice President of the ICA
Professor Jeong-Guon Ih of the Mechanical Engineering Department at KAIST has been re-elected as the Vice President of the International Commission for Acoustics (ICA). His second term of office is from October 16, 2016 to September 30, 2019.
Professor Ih, the first Korean who was selected to a senior position on the ICA management board, took over his current post in 2015 when the vice president at the time passed away in the middle of his term.
During his stint, Professor Ih played a key role in planning the ICA’s triennial gathering, the International Congress on Acoustics, in Gyeongju, Korea, scheduled for October 24-28, 2022. He will also serve as the general chair for the conference.
The International Congress on Acoustics is the largest professional meeting in the field of acoustics. It provides a venue to meet, discuss, and exchange ideas covering all aspects of acoustics including an extensive technical exhibition that highlights the latest advances in acoustical products such as materials, systems, and equipment.
Acoustics has grown to become an important element in the Information Age in the areas of automation, machine learning, and virtual reality. Hosting the Congress will support Korea’s goal to lead acoustic research and development on the global stage.
Professor Ih said, “Serving international academic organizations offers great opportunities to learn global trends and to collaborate with various research institutions, universities, and industries worldwide. I hope my service will inspire many young Korean researchers to pursue their careers in this field.”
Professor Ih is also a member of eight eminent international academic societies such as the Audio Engineering Society, the International Congress on Ultrasonics, and the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering.
The ICA was founded in 1951 as a subcommittee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and it consists of 46 member states and four observer nations. It promotes international development and collaboration in all fields of acoustics including research, development, education, and standardization.
2016.12.16 View 5977 -
Professor Hyun Chung Claims the Elmer L. Hann Award 2016
Professor Hyun Chung of KAIST’s Mechanical Engineering Department received the Elmer L. Hann Award 2016 at the SNAME Maritime Convention (SMC) that took place November 1-5 in Seattle, Washington, in the United States.
Held annually, the SMC is the largest academic gathering for researchers and professionals in maritime and ocean engineering, and it is hosted by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME).
With more than 6,000 members around the world in 85 countries, SNAME is an internationally-recognized, non-profit, professional society of individual members serving the maritime and offshore industries and their suppliers. It strives to advance the art, science, and practice of naval architecture, marine engineering, ocean engineering, and other marine-related professions through the exchange of knowledge and ideas, as well as the promotion of R&D, and education.
Every year, SNAME selects three research papers that are either published in its academic journal or presented at its sponsored conferences and awards them, respectively. One of the three awards is the Elmer L. Hann Award.
This year, the Society announced Professor Chung’s paper as the Elmer L. Hann Award winner. His paper, entitled “Tolerance Analysis and Diagnosis Model of Compliant Block Assembly Considering Welding Deformation,” was presented at the World Maritime Technology Conference held November 3-7, 2015 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
Analysis, management, and diagnostics of tolerance are important factors in the production of ocean structures. In the paper, Professor Chung’s team proposed a simplified tolerance analysis and diagnosis model including the effects of welding distortion for accuracy control in ship block assembly, thereby improving the production process.
Professor Chung said, “This is indeed a wonderful award for our team. From early this year, with support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, we have collaborated with the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, and the Edison Welding Institute to study this topic more deeply. We will keep up the good work to make meaningful progress.”
2016.12.10 View 7341 -
A KAIST Team Wins the Chem-E-Car Competition 2016
A KAIST team consisted of four students from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering won the Chem-E-Car Competition 2016, which took place on November 13 at the Union Square in San Francisco. The students who participated were Young-Hyun Cha, Jin-Sol Shin, Dae-Seok Oh, and Wan-Tae Kim. Their adviser was Professor Doh Chang Lee of the same department.
Established in 1999, the Chem-E-Car is an annual worldwide college competition for students majoring in chemical engineering. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), founded in 1908, is the world’s leading organization for chemical engineering professionals with more than 50,000 members from over 100 countries and hosts this competition every year.
A total of 41 university teams including Carnegie Mellon University and Purdue University participated in this year’s competition.
KAIST students competed in the event for the first time in 2014 and reached the rank of 28. In 2015, the students placed 16th, and finally, took the first place in last month’s competition, followed by the Georgia Institute of Technology.
In the competition, students must design small-scale (20x30x40 cm) automobiles that operate chemically, as well as describe their research and drive their car a fixed distance down a wedge-shaped course to demonstrate the car’s capabilities. In addition to driving a specified distance (15-30 meters), the car must hold a payload of 0-500 mL of water.
The organizers tell participants the exact distance and amount of payloads one hour before the competition begins. Winners are chosen based on their finishing time and how close their car reaches the finish line. Thus, students must show sophisticated coordination of chemical reactions to win.
The KAIST team designed their car to have a stable power output using a Vanadium redox flow battery developed by Professor Hee Tak Kim of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. They employed iodine clock reactions to induce quick and precise chemical reactions to control their car.
KAIST’s car finished with the best run coming within 11 cm of the target line; Georgia Tech’s car reached the finish line by 13 cm and New Jersey Institute of Technology’s car by 14 cm.
Young-Hyun Cha, one of the four students, said, “When we first designed our car, we had to deal with many issues such as stalls or connection errors. We kept working on fixing these problems through trial and error, which eventually led us to success.”
For a news article on KAIST’s win at 2016 Chemi-E-Car Competition by AIChE, see the link below:
http://www.aiche.org/chenected/2016/11/koreas-kaist-wins-1st-place-2016-chem-e-car-competition-photos
2016.12.08 View 9649 -
Professor Kwon to Represent the Asia-Pacific Region of the IEEE RAS
Professor Dong-Soon Kwon of the Mechanical Engineering Department at KAIST has been reappointed to the Administrative Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE RAS). Beginning January 1, 2017, he will serve his second three-year term, which will end in 2019. In 2014, he was the first Korean appointed to the committee, representing the Asia-Pacific community of the IEEE Society.
Professor Kwon said, “I feel thankful but, at the same time, it is a great responsibility to serve the Asian research community within the Society. I hope I can contribute to the development of robotics engineering in the region and in Korea as well.”
Consisted of 18 elected members, the administrative committee manages the major activities of IEEE RAS including hosting its annual flagship meeting, the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
The IEEE RAS fosters the advancement in the theory and practice of robotics and automation engineering and facilitates the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge that supports the maintenance of high professional standards among its members.
2016.12.06 View 8028 -
Mystery of Biological Plastic Synthesis Machinery Unveiled
Plastics and other polymers are used every day. These polymers are mostly made from fossil resources by refining petrochemicals. On the other hand, many microorganisms naturally synthesize polyesters known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) as distinct granules inside cells.
PHAs are a family of microbial polyesters that have attracted much attention as biodegradable and biocompatible plastics and elastomers that can substitute petrochemical counterparts. There have been numerous papers and patents on gene cloning and metabolic engineering of PHA biosynthetic machineries, biochemical studies, and production of PHAs; simple Google search with “polyhydroxyalkanoates” yielded returns of 223,000 document pages. PHAs have always been considered amazing examples of biological polymer synthesis. It is astounding to see PHAs of 500 kDa to sometimes as high as 10,000 kDa can be synthesized in vivo by PHA synthase, the key polymerizing enzyme in PHA biosynthesis. They have attracted great interest in determining the crystal structure of PHA synthase over the last 30 years, but unfortunately without success. Thus, the characteristics and molecular mechanisms of PHA synthase were under a dark veil.
In two papers published back-to-back in Biotechnology Journal online on November 30, 2016, a Korean research team led by Professor Kyung-Jin Kim at Kyungpook National University and Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) described the crystal structure of PHA synthase from Ralstonia eutropha, the best studied bacterium for PHA production, and reported the structural basis for the detailed molecular mechanisms of PHA biosynthesis. The crystal structure has been deposited to Protein Data Bank in February 2016. After deciphering the crystal structure of the catalytic domain of PHA synthase, in addition to other structural studies on whole enzyme and related proteins, the research team also performed experiments to elucidate the mechanisms of the enzyme reaction, validating detailed structures, enzyme engineering, and also N-terminal domain studies among others.
Through several biochemical studies based on crystal structure, the authors show that PHA synthase exists as a dimer and is divided into two distinct domains, the N-terminal domain (RePhaC1ND) and the C-terminal domain (RePhaC1CD). The RePhaC1CD catalyzes the polymerization reaction via a non-processive ping-pong mechanism using a Cys-His-Asp catalytic triad. The two catalytic sites of the RePhaC1CD dimer are positioned 33.4 Å apart, suggesting that the polymerization reaction occurs independently at each site. This study also presents the structure-based mechanisms for substrate specificities of various PHA synthases from different classes.
Professor Sang Yup Lee, who has worked on this topic for more than 20 years, said,
“The results and information presented in these two papers have long been awaited not only in the PHA community, but also metabolic engineering, bacteriology/microbiology, and in general biological sciences communities. The structural information on PHA synthase together with the recently deciphered reaction mechanisms will be valuable for understanding the detailed mechanisms of biosynthesizing this important energy/redox storage material, and also for the rational engineering of PHA synthases to produce designer bioplastics from various monomers more efficiently.”
Indeed, these two papers published in Biotechnology Journal finally reveal the 30-year mystery of machinery of biological polyester synthesis, and will serve as the essential compass in creating designer and more efficient bioplastic machineries.
References:
Jieun Kim, Yeo-Jin Kim, So Young Choi, Sang Yup Lee and Kyung-Jin Kim. “Crystal structure of Ralstonia eutropha polyhydroxyalkanoate synthase C-terminal domain and reaction mechanisms” Biotechnology Journal DOI: 10.1002/biot.201600648
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/biot.201600648/abstract
Yeo-Jin Kim, So Young Choi, Jieun Kim, Kyeong Sik Jin, Sang Yup Lee and Kyung-Jin Kim. “Structure and function of the N-terminal domain of Ralstonia eutropha polyhydroxyalkanoate synthase, and the proposed structure and mechanisms of the whole enzyme” Biotechnology Journal DOI: 10.1002/biot.201600649
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/biot.201600649/abstract
2016.12.02 View 9026