LLO
-
KAIST and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Partner for Research and Education Collaboration
President Steve Kang of KAIST and President Eric W. Kaler of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (United States) signed a memorandum of understanding to create exchange programs for students and faculty and to conduct joint research in the field of health and food. The following is an excerpt from President Kaler’s blog (https://storify.com/UMNstory/globalumn-hksk#edaadf) on his visit of KAIST on November 18, 2015:
A visit to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
About 90 miles from Seoul—and more than that two-and-a-half-hours of a bus ride through the rugged early-morning traffic of South Korea’s capital city—sits Daejeon, Korea’s sixth largest city and home to KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Today, President Kaler and the small University of Minnesota delegation accompanying him visited what’s considered Korea’s MIT, a place focused on research and known to push the limits toward the future.
Fingernail heart monitors? Wireless anesthetic-monitoring devices?
KAIST is working on them.
The overlap of interests—from biomedical engineering to nanotechnology to robotics—between KAIST (pronounced “Kyst”) and the U are remarkable. Smartphone apps to monitor human health and GPS-driven robots to serve military interests or deliver packages were among the developing inventions that KAIST scientists showed to Kaler.
And even the personal relationships seem to illustrate the cliché of a small world and the natural affinity of Minnesota and KAIST.
KAIST’s President Sang Mo Kang was once the head of the University of Illinois’ department of electrical and computer engineering, and he and Kaler—a renowned chemical engineer before becoming the U’s president—hit it off … despite disagreeing about the potential outcome of Saturday’s Illinois-Gophers football game.
Accompanying Kaler on the day’s journey, meetings, and signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two schools to advance collaborations was U Associate Professor Sang Hyun Oh. Oh happens to be a physics graduate of this very KAIST and is now a rising star in Minnesota’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The two sides agreed to focus on matching scholars on their respective campuses to discuss the sorts of research the two institutions can partner on. The idea of “Grand Challenges,” at the core of the U’s Twin Cities campus Strategic Plan, has fascinated Korean higher education leaders during Kaler’s weeklong visit, and KAIST’s leadership was interested in the health and food research, two U strengths.
###
2015.12.04 View 8657 -
KAIST's Top 10 Contributions to Korea and the World
Established in 1971, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) started off as a relatively modest graduate school in a few disciplines in science and technology, but has gradually expanded into a full-fledged research university over the years.
From the beginning, KAIST was intended to offer an elite science education, setting it apart from other universities in Korea. A majority of its graduates have contributed to the development of, what the world now praises, Korean industry and economy, and have led the Korean scientific community for several decades. The university has also advanced the frontiers of knowledge, conducting the lion’s share of the nation’s private research and development in basic and applied science, leading to innovations and technologies essential to the growth of today’s Korea.
As it establishes international benchmarks of success, KAIST has acquired a global reputation for delivering the highest level of science and engineering education, while performing cutting-edge research and serving as a crucial driver to generate new knowledge and innovation beneficial not only to Korea but also to the world. The university has consistently ranked in the top 100 research universities for over more than a decade, according to the world university rankings published by international ranking institutions for higher education, among others, Quacquarelli Symonds and the Times Higher Education.
KAIST will mark its 45th anniversary next year. It plans to celebrate the anniversary, and here are some of the reasons why:
KAIST’s Win at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) 2015
Team KAIST, consisted of 29 members (students and researchers) led by Professors Jun-Ho Oh of the Mechanical Engineering Department and In-So Kweon of the Electrical Engineering Department, won the international humanoid robotics competition hosted by the United States (US) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Upon completion of the first and second competitions, the finals were held on June 5-6, 2015, at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. DARPA hosted the event to spur the development of humanoid robots to assist rescue and relief efforts in dangerous environments such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident in 2011. With 24 international teams participating in the finals from the US, Japan, Germany, China, Italy, and Korea, Team KAIST’s humanoid robot, DRC-HUBO, completed all eight tasks in 44 minutes and 28 seconds, six minutes earlier than the runner-up, and almost eleven minutes earlier than the third-place team, walking away with the grand prize of USD 2 million.
Hitting a Grand Slam to Win Major International Design Awards
Professor Sang-Min Bae of the Industrial Design Department achieved a grand slam in international design awards with his work HEARTea, an interactive tumbler, winning four major design competitions in the world: the iF Design Award, the International Design Excellence Awards, the Red Dot Design Award, and the Good Design Award. Released in 2010, HEARTea swept prizes from the four awards which were held during the period of the year 2010-2011. The tumbler displays the temperature of liquid contained inside in three degrees (cool, warm, and hot) by showing different colored lights on the surface of the tumbler based on the liquid temperature (see picture below). In 2015, Professor Bae and his research team won three awards from the 2015 Red Dot Design Award: the Best of the Best Award and two Red Dot Design Concept Awards. The team received the Best of the Best Award, the most prestigious award among the Red Dot Design awards, for Boxchool, a modular classroom built on shipping containers, which offers underprivileged children better opportunities for learning. With greater mobility, Boxchool can be easily installed in any setting, including remote areas where children do not have access to regular school facilities.
Glass Fabric Thermoelectric Generator, the Grand Prize Winner at the Netexplo Forum 2015
Professor Byung-Jin Cho of the Electrical Engineering Department received the grand prize at the Netexplo Forum 2015 held in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on February 4-5, 2015, at the UNESCO House in Paris. Established in 2007, the Netexplo Forum is an annual international conference hosted by the Netexplo Observatory, a non-profit organization sponsored by the French Senate and the French Ministry for the Digital Economy, which studies the impact of digital technology on society and business. Each year, the Netexplo Forum highlights major trends in digital technology and innovation worldwide and lists the top ten most promising technologies that it considers will greatly impact the world. Among the list for this year, Professor Cho’s glass fabric-based thermoelectric (TE) generator received the grand prize. Using a screen-printing technique, Professor Cho printed TE liquid materials onto a glass fabric to generate electricity through the thermoelectric effect, that is, by generating electricity from temperature difference. Since the glass fabric is light and flexible, this technology is expected to have a wide range of applications in wearable computers and devices.
Charging on the Go: Online Electric Vehicle System
KAIST’s Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) is a system that charges electric vehicles while stationary or driving, thus removing the need to stop for charges. Developed by Professor Dong-Ho Cho of the Electrical Engineering Department and his research team, OLEV receives power wirelessly through a new application called “Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance technology (SMFIR).” Electrical cables buried underneath roads create magnetic fields, and a receiving device installed underneath the electric vehicle collects the fields and converts them into electricity. Time, a US weekly magazine, listed OLEV as one of the 50 Greatest Inventions of the Year 2010 in its November 22nd issue. Since 2012, several OLEV buses have been operating daily to provide citizens with transportation in cities such as Yeosu, Gumi, and Sejong in Korea. In April 2015, Professor Cho signed a memorandum of understanding with the city government of Medellín, the second largest city in Colombia, to provide two OLEV buses for inner-city transportation services. The research team also developed OLEV for a high capacity transit system including trams and high-speed trains, successfully showcasing 60 kHz of power transferred wirelessly to trams and trains in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
Pioneer in the Development of Functional Mesoporous Materials and Zeolites
On September 25, 2014, Thomson Reuters announced the “2014 Citation Laureates,” a list of candidates considered likely to win the Nobel Prize in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and economics. Distinguished Professor Ryong Ryoo of the Department of Chemistry was named the 2014 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates in Chemistry in recognition of his significant contribution to the advancement of designing functional mesoporous materials. He is the first Korean scientist to make the list. Professor Ryoo has pioneered the field of functional mesoporous materials and zeolites which are widely used as catalysts and sorbents. In 1999, he developed a nanocasting method, and with the technique, was able to synthesize ordered mesoporous carbon materials, for the first time in the world. Today, ordered mesoporous carbon materials have widespread applications in many areas such as adsorbents, catalysts and supports, gas-storage hosts, and electrode materials. Since 2006, using zeolite frameworks, Professor Ryoo has led the development of new methods to synthesize mesoporous materials whose molecules are designed to have a hierarchical structure of microspores and mesopores. He has published 255 research papers in renowned academic journals including Nature and Science. In December 2011, Science highlighted his research as one of the top ten breakthroughs in the year of 2011 in an article entitled “Directing Zeolite Structures into Hierarchically Nanoporous Architectures.” Professor Ryoo received numerous awards and honors including the World’s Top 100 Chemists over the Past 11 Years (2000-2010) by UNESCO and IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), the Breck Award by International Zeolite Association, and the Ho-Am prize in Science.
The Launch of Korea’s First Satellites into Space
Founded in 1989, the Satellite Technology Research Center (SaTReC) at KAIST has led the development of a series of Korean-made satellites over the past 26 years. The first satellite, the Korea Institute of Technology Satellite-1 (KITSAT-1), was launched on August 11, 1992, at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. KITSAT-1 was designed in collaboration with a British university, the University of Surrey in Guildford. The success of KITSAT-1 sparked nation-wide interest in the development of space technology and led to the subsequent launches of 18 satellites and three carrier rockets such as KITSAT-2 and 3 (meteorological satellites); KSR-1, 2, and 3 (carrier rockets); KOREASAT-1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (communication satellites); KOMPSAT-1, 2, 3, and 5 (multipurpose satellites); STSAT-1, 2C, and 3 (scientific satellites); and COMS-1 (navigation satellite). The latest scientific satellite, STSAT-3, and an earth observation satellite, KOMPSAT-3A, were launched in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The STSAT-2C, exclusively developed by SaTReC, was launched in January 2013 and transmitted data on the observation of space environments to the ground station located on KAIST’s campus for 14 months. The STSAT-2C was the first satellite developed solely with Korean technology. On June 30, 2009, the Korean government also established a spaceport in South Jeolla’s Goheung County, the Naro Space Center to launch satellites and spacecraft.
KAIST: Major Feeder for Startups in Korea
As seen in its core values of promoting creativity and a challenging spirit, KAIST has always encouraged startups and technology transfers led by university members including students and faculty. In the past four years from 2011 to 2014, students and faculty members have created 104 startups based on technology innovation and research outcomes, with an average of 26 new companies started per year. This is the highest number of university-led startups in Korea. As of 2013, KAIST graduates founded a total of 1,245 companies, generating approximately USD 1.5 billion sales and creating 34,000 jobs. KAIST has provided a variety of programs and facilities to build a startup-friendly campus culture and support student- and faculty-led entrepreneurship, for example, the End-Run Policy, Startup KAIST Studio, the Institute of Startup and Entrepreneurship, and the Startup Incubation Center. In particular, KAIST Idea Factory, a startup laboratory established last year, where students play around with ideas by conducting new experiments or building test products, created 3-D printers this year, producing 20 prototypes and filing four pending patents. Recently, KAIST has registered four proprietary standard patents with MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)-LA’s HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) Patent Portfolio License, which provides access to essential patent rights for the HEVC digital video coding standard. KAIST expects to acquire more than 50 proprietary standard patents within two years, generating close to UDS 1 million in income.
The Number of KAIST Doctoral Graduates Reaches Over 10,000
Since the establishment of KAIST forty-four years ago, more than ten thousand alumni have received their doctorates. The university’s 2015 Commencement ceremony took place on February 13, 2015, at the Sports Complex on campus, awarding Dr. Sun-Mi Cho of the Department of Biological Sciences the 10,000th doctoral degree. She also received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from KAIST. In 1978, KAIST had only two doctoral graduates, but since 1987, there have been more than one hundred graduates each year, two hundred since 1994, and four hundred since 2000. In 2015 alone, 522 doctoral students graduated. One of the first doctoral graduates, Dr. Dong-Yol Yang (Class of 1978 in the Mechanical Engineering Department) became a professor in the same department of KAIST. In the early 1970s, many Koreans preferred to go abroad for Ph.D. degrees, but this changed when KAIST began to select candidates for master’s degrees in 1973, and doctoral degrees in 1975. Talented Korean students began to work in KAIST laboratories, and its graduates were known for their knowledge and skills. Now, KAIST receives many applications from talented foreign students as well. At the 2015 Commencement, KAIST conferred 522 Doctoral, 1,241 Master’s, and 915 Bachelor of Science degrees. Since its inception in 1971, KAIST has granted 10,403 doctoral degrees, 26,402 master’s degrees, and 51,412 bachelor’s degrees.
Fostering a New Learning Model: The Education 3.0 Program
KAIST undertook a bold initiative to improve its education system that would address more effectively the needs of today’s higher education to foster talents with creative and critical thinking skills. It introduced a new pedagogical model, the Education 3.0 program, to the campus in the spring of 2012, which was then an extremely rare movement taken by universities around the world. The Education 3.0 program incorporates flipped learning and smart classrooms. This means there are no formal lectures while in-class time is devoted to problem solving, exercises, projects, or discussions. The program provided students with greater opportunity to control their learning and interact more with professors and peers. Originally started with three general courses in physics, chemistry, and biology, the Education 3.0 is now offered in 50-60 courses per semester. In 2013 alone, approximately 2,000 KAIST students took the Education 3.0 courses. The university has also developed and implemented an e-Learning system to provide online courses, as well as participated in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Partnering with Coursera since 2013, KAIST has offered three MOOCs in engineering and business management to the global community. Leading the efforts to create Korean MOOCs (K-MOOCs), KAIST agreed with other Korean universities in October 2015 to create online courses in basic subjects of physics, chemistry, mathematics, life science, mechanical engineering, and material science. K-MOOCs will be available in the summer of 2016.
Holistic Admissions for Undergraduates
Korean universities traditionally put an emphasis on students’ empirical data such as a GPA or the national College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) when reviewing applicants for the undergraduate admission. This practice, however, has posed serious challenges, most notably with CSAT’s requirement that the test takes place only once a year. It was simply impossible and unfair to assess students’ capability from the scores of a high-pressure, high-stakes standardized test. In 2009, KAIST changed its undergraduate admission process to consider the whole applicant’s profile, not just looking for students with good grades, but interesting and promising students who would contribute to the campus community in different and diverse ways. KAIST’s admissions officers have taken into account applicants’ interests, passions, special talents, and personality through their personal essays, recommendation letters, extracurricular activities, and intensive interviews. Prior to KAIST’s new policy, no other university in the nation had ever incorporated such a holistic approach to review student applications. Today, most Korean universities have adopted this admission policy. In addition, for the first time in Korea, KAIST offered all freshmen the option to defer the decision on majors, thereby allowing them to explore their interests more freely. Even after declaring majors as sophomores and higher classes, KAIST students can easily change their majors, and undergraduate students can actually create and lead their own research projects. As such, KAIST has continued to offer innovations to provide students with a quality education to foster their potential.
2015.11.27 View 18277 -
More Donations Arrive to Establish the New Medicine Research and Development Center on Campus
A raft of businesses continues to make donations to establish a new medicine research and development center on campus. The Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST is leading the fundraising campaign.
On November 9, 2015, Nikon Instruments Korea Co., Ltd. contributed USD 8,500 to the fundraising, followed by Carl Zeiss AG and Three-Shine Inc., which donated USD 12,800 and 8,500, respectively.
Bruno Lin, an Executive Director at Carl Zeiss AG in Korea, said, “I’m very glad to participate in this fundraising initiative for the Biological Sciences Department at KAIST, one rapidly reaching out to the world.”
From the left in the picture are Vice President Tae-Hoon Kim, Director Gyu-Hyeok Lee, and Executive Director Bruno Lin of Carl Zeiss AG, Byung-Ha Oh, Dean of the Biological Sciences Department, and Professor Eunjoon Kim.
From the left in the picture are Byung-Ha Oh, Dean of the Biological Sciences Department, President Chun-Gui Park of Three-Shine Inc., and Professor Daesoo Kim.
President Chun of Three-Shine Inc., said, “We hope that the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST, aided by the construction of new research center, will produce practical research achievements and stand on the frontier of new medicine development research in Korea.”
The New Medicine Research and Development Center will be equipped with state-of-the-art, purpose-built research facilities to support convergent, interdisciplinary research in biomedicine.
2015.11.27 View 7898 -
Professor Keon-Jae Lee Lectures at IEDM and ISSCC Forums
Professor Keon-Jae Lee of KAIST’s Materials Science and Engineering Department delivered a speech at the 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held on December 7-9, 2015 in Washington, D.C.
He will also present a speech at the 2016 International Solid-State Circuits Conference scheduled on January 31-February 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
Both professional gatherings are considered the world’s most renowned forums in electronic devices and semiconductor technology. It is rare for a Korean researcher to be invited to speak at these global conferences.
Professor Lee was recognized for his research on flexible NAND chips. The Korea Times, an English language daily newspaper in Korea, reported on his participation in the forums and his recent work. An excerpt of the article follows below:
“KAIST Professor to Lecture at Renowned Tech Forums”
By Lee Min-hyung, The Korea Times, November 26, 2015
Recently he has focused on delivering technologies for producing flexible materials that can be applied to everyday life. The flexible NAND flash memory chips are expected to be widely used for developing flexible handsets. His latest research also includes flexible light-emitting diodes (LED) for implantable biomedical applications.
Lee is currently running a special laboratory focused on developing new flexible nano-materials. The research group is working to develop what it calls “self-powered flexible electronic systems” using nanomaterials and electronic technology.
Lee’s achievement with flexible NAND chips was published in the October edition of Nano Letters, the renowned U.S.-based scientific journal.
He said that flexible memory chips will be used to develop wearable computers that can be installed anywhere.
2015.11.26 View 11718 -
Public Lectures by KAIST's Humanities and Social Sciences Research Center
The Humanities and Social Sciences Research Center at KAIST offers public lectures at the International Seminar Hall of the Humanities and Social Sciences building on campus from November 12, 2015 to December 10, 2015. There will be four lectures, all of which will be available in Korean only.
The theme of the lectures is “social issues and strategic solutions.” Experts in various fields including women’s studies, criminal psychology, Go (a Chinese board game) and its philosophy, and Korean studies will participate, offering multifaceted analysis and solutions for social issues in Korea.
Joo-Hee Kim, a researcher at the Korean Women’s Institute of Ewha Women’s University, will lecture on “Problems of Loan Products Exclusively for Women” and discuss the background of "micro-loans" which are often targeted at women, while evaluating the logic of financial corporations behind marketing such products.
Lectures by Professor Ji-Sun Park from the Department of Social Psychology at Ewha Women’s University on “Understanding of Criminal Psychology from Letters,” Professor Soo-Hyun Jeong from the Department of Go at Myeongji University on “Life Lessons and Strategies from Playing Go,” and Professor Seung-Taek Ahn from Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies of Seoul National University on “Community Problems in Folk Culture” will follow.
The organizer of the lectures, Professor Jung-Hoon Kim of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at KAIST said,
“These lectures will provide local citizens and the KAIST family a wonderful opportunity to understand important social issues from the perspective of social science. It will also serve as a valuable time to think about how our social conflicts could differ from those of other countries, helping us to find solutions.”
To register for these free lectures, go to http://hss.kaist.ac.kr by November 9, 2015.
2015.11.06 View 7203 -
KAIST Hosts the Wearable Computer Contest 2015
“What you see is a compact electronic system on a dust mask, which monitors the amount of dust taken in by a worker and lets other workers know if the person is injured in an industrial site,” said Bum Taek Jung, a Master’s candidate from Sungkyunkwan University during the Wearable Computer Contest 2015 held in KI building of KAIST on November 5, 2015.
He explained his interest in developing this system, “Dust-related respiratory diseases and falling accidents are still prevalent in industrial sites.” He added, “Using the smart dust mask helps monitoring workers’ physical condition in real time, allowing us to cope with accidents in a much more timely manner.” A smart dust mask is a portable device that alerts the user with orange or red light signs when the amount of dust inhaled by the user is higher than the threshold. Its application on a smartphone can also allow project managers to alert the risk of falling accidents to workers by employing a gyroscope and an accelerometer on the mask.
The Wearable Computer Contest 2015 met for the eleventh time at KAIST on November 5-6, 2015. A wearable computer refers to a portable device which users can wear directly on the body or on their clothes while moving. Products that can provide various services by connecting to a smartphone have become increasingly popular. The contest is an excellent opportunity for university students to design creative wearable systems similar to those often depicted in movies and comics.
This year 102 teams from universities all over the nation participated. After screening and evaluation of their presentations, only 8 teams in the product section and 3 teams in the ideas section were selected for the finals. Of the many entries to the contest, the ECG security system caught many people’s attention. The wearable, which attaches to a shirt, acts like an electrocardiogram. By comparing the ECG reading with the one stored in the data server, the wearable can authenticate the user. The system could be widely used by enterprises and financial companies where tight security and authentication are crucial.
The winners of the product and the ideas sections received USD 4,300 and usd 860 respectively along with Minister Prizes from the Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning of Korea. The Chairman of the contest, Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo from the Electrical Engineering Department of KAIST said, “The contest will be a great opportunity for anyone to have a look at advanced wearable devices developed through close integration of state-of-the-art technologies and creative ideas from young minds.”
2015.11.05 View 8581 -
Dual Degree Agreement on the Master's Program of Electrical Engineering with the Technical University of Denmark
KAIST and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) established a joint degree program for master’s students in electrical engineering. The agreement, made on October 22, 2015, will allow master students from both universities to study for one year at each institution.
For details, go to the DTU news: http://www.dtu.dk/english/News/Nyhed?id=9e7b91e5-1719-4421-8cc2-5e3fe7d605d7
2015.11.03 View 3905 -
The 2015 Intelligent SoC Robot War Finals
The final round of the 2015 Intelligent SoC (System on Chip) Robot War took place from October 29, 2015 to November 1, 2015 at Kintex in Ilsan, Korea.
A “SoC robot” refers to an intelligent robot capable of autonomous object recognition and decision making by employing advanced semiconductor and information technology.
First hosted in 2002, the Intelligent SoC Robot War cultivates top talents in the field of semiconductors and seeks to revitalize Korea’s information technology (IT) and semiconductor industries.
The event consists of two competitions: HURO and the Tae Kwon Do Robot.
In the HURO competition, participating robots sequentially complete eight assignments without outside controls. Whichever robot finishes the highest number of tasks and spends the shortest amount of time for the completion of assignments wins the competition.
At the HURO competition, a SoC robot overcomes obstacles.
The Tae Kwon Do Robot competition includes Korea’s traditional martial arts into robotics. Here, the winner is selected by sparring between a pair of competitors. The camera attached to the robot’s head recognizes the position of the opponent and the distance between them. From that, the robot takes actions such as punching or kicking.
Two robots are vying for the title of the Tae Kwon Do Robot.
This year, 570 people from 104 teams from all over the nation applied, and after preliminaries, 26 teams entered the finals.
The winners of the HURO and Tae Kwon Do Robot competitions receive awards from the president and prime minister of Korea, respectively.
The Chairman of the Intelligent SoC Robot War, Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo of Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST, said,
“Korea’s strength in semiconductors and information technology can serve as a great potential to advance the development of intelligent robots. We hope that our experiences in this competition will allow Korea to excel in this field.”
2015.11.01 View 9640 -
KAIST Invites Entrepreneurs and Experts to Participate in a Social Technology Innovation Symposium
The Research Institute for Social Technology and Innovation (RISTI) at KAIST hosted the Social Technology Innovation Symposium on November 4, 2015 in KI building, to which 100 social business entrepreneurs and experts in the field were invited.
Social businesses refer to activities of companies, which strive to resolve social problems such as environmental issues, income inequality, and aging societies while seeking profit at the same time. This is different from companies taking social responsibility and non-profit organization serving the community in that they attempt to solve social problems through a sustainable business model.
Held under the theme of “technology capabilities of companies and social business strategies,” this symposium was the first to gather representatives from social venture companies, medium-sized enterprises, and major companies at one place to share their experiences in a social business and to discuss future tasks.
The symposium was divided into sessions with three different topics ranging from social business strategies using information technology, a social business and its business model, and social business strategies of major companies.
The symposium started with keynote speeches delivered by Professor HongKyu Lee, RISTI, and Professor Hong-Tak Lim, RISTI, who discussed the role of technology in a social business. It was followed by plenary sessions led by CEOs who are running social businesses such as the Sharing and Technologies Incorporated Project, Simwon Technology, Ecojun Company, Underdogs, and the Farming Fund as well as by representatives from a social responsibility section of CJ management team and the social responsibility council of SK. In the future, these talks will serve as a medium to share their experiences in social businesses and to discuss the role of technology in the business. Some talks touched upon topics such as development of platforms for social innovation, social businesses employing disabled workers, and crowd funding for farming.
The Director of RISTI, Professor HongKyu Lee said, “The symposium will be the first to have people from leading companies in social businesses in Korea in one place.” He added, “This will be a great opportunity for anyone to know what will be the future of social businesses, which were created to solve the social problems caused by capitalism.”
The symposium was sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy of Korea.
2015.10.30 View 9042 -
Mapping the Folding Process of a Single Membrane Protein
KAIST and UCLA scientists were able to observe an individual membrane protein fold and unfold by pulling and releasing magnetically trapped protein molecules.
Proteins are huge molecules containing hundreds to thousands of atoms that adopt a unique three dimensional structure, placing chemical groups in just the right place to catalyze reactions or build cellular structures. How all those atoms manage to find the right location - the so-called folding problem - has fascinated molecular biologists since the first structures were seen in the 1950s. Moreover, folding has important medical implications because most genetic defects cause protein misfolding.
About a third of all proteins float around in the cell membrane where they ensure the right chemicals get in the cell in the right amounts. Membrane proteins also provide key information links between the cell and its environment. Indeed, most drugs target membrane proteins. Nevertheless, the folding of membrane proteins has been particularly difficult to study and has rarely been studied in natural environments, leaving the folding process for a large fraction of the protein universe still largely cloaked in mystery.
In a recent issue of Nature Chemical Biology, published on October 19, 2015, a research team led by Tae-Young Yoon of the Department of Physics at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and James U. Bowie of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), report a new method for manipulating the folding of membrane proteins in a membrane environment using a tool called a magnetic tweezer.
Researchers first attach long DNA handles to the ends of the protein. One handle is attached to a glass surface and the other to a magnetic bead. Using a magnet, they can essentially grab the protein and pull on it, inducing it to unfold. By playing with the bead attached to the protein, they can force the protein to unfold or allow it to refold, and watch all this happening by 3D-tracking of the magnetic bead. With this novel strategy, they were able to quantitatively map the folding energy landscape, the folding kinetic rate, and folding intermediates of a membrane protein in a membrane environment for the first time.
“I have been dreaming about this experiment for a decade. To see it work so well is really gratifying,” said Dr. Bowie.
One of the major surprises in the study was that essentially all the atoms of the protein jump into the correct structure together. The researchers expected that the protein structure would come together in a more piecemeal fashion, with different parts of the structure forming separately, but that was not the case. It is possible that nature evolved such a smooth, highly cooperative folding process to prevent partially folded forms that could get into trouble in the crowded cell membrane. On the other hand, the cooperative folding seen here might not apply to other membrane proteins.
“We need to look at more proteins. The technique developed here may allow us to do just that,” said Dr. Yoon.
The single molecule mechanical manipulation technique could enable detailed folding studies of many other membrane proteins. A major barrier to the study of membrane proteins previously is that the proteins tend to stick together and get tangled up, as computer cords lying at your feet tend to do. With the tweezer technique used in this work, the protein cords are held apart from other cords so they can’t get knotted up. It is hoped that the new approach will open up an important part of the protein universe to scrutiny, including many proteins that become misfolded in disease states.
The title of the research paper is “Mapping the energy landscape for second-stage folding of a single membrane protein” (DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.1939).
Picture: Single-molecule magnetic tweezers that induce mechanical unfolding and refolding of a single membrane protein. Since the force applied is parallel to the biological lipid membrane, the unfolding and refolding processes occur within the membrane.
2015.10.20 View 10021 -
Visit by Danish Folk High School: Vallekilde Højskole
A group of 60 Danish students and teachers from Vallekilde Højskole, one of 70 Folk High Schools that are spread across Denmark, visited KAIST on October 16, 2015.
The Danish delegation and KAIST’s student organization, the International Conference for the Integration of Science, Technology, and Society (ICISTS), jointly ran a conference entitled “Learning through Having Fun and Games.”
At the conference, the Headmaster of Game Academy at Vallekilde Højskole, Thomas Vigild, gave a lecture on how Vallekilde Folk High School is educating new generations with play, curiosity, and collaboration.
During the conference, KAIST and Danish students held an event called the PlayShop, which was hosted by Headmaster Vigild. At the PlayShop, some 80 students from both institutions enjoyed Danish folk games and shared cross-cultural experiences.
The Danish Folk High School, which dates back to 1844 when its first school opened in Southern Denmark, started as a civic school offering equal learning opportunities to people less fortunate to receive a regular education.
Today, the Folk High School has grown into life-long educational institutions that provide Danish citizens from high school students to seniors with alternative, complementary education that allows citizens to venture out into new fields of their interest or further hone their professional skills and knowledge.
Established in 1865, the Vallekilde Folk High School specializes in journalism, game development, event management, literature, crafts, youth leadership, music and design. Its game development classes at the Game Academy are known for helping students reach their potential through learning from fun games, creative initiatives, and collaborative projects.
The invitation of the Danish school was made possible by Director Heekyung Park of the Institute of Disaster Studies at KAIST.
Director Park said,
“In a sense, I could say that all Danish Folk High Schools are an ideal form of delivering education. They pursue ways to teach students without losing their curiosity and interest in subjects. The schools remove any type of exams from classrooms, while striving to ensure the maximum participation of students in the learning process. KAIST could emulate some of these educational practices to offer its students a classroom free of stress and full of inspirations.”
The Danish delegation toured KAIST’s Humanoid Research Center and the Urban Robotics Lab after the conference.
2015.10.16 View 5933 -
Yang-Hann Kim named recipient of the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education by the Acoustical Society of America
Courtesy of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Press release issued by ASA on October 8, 2015:
Yang-Hann Kim named recipient of the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education by the Acoustical Society of America
Melville (NY), 8 October 2015—Yang-Hann Kim, Professor at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), Daejeon, has been named recipient of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education. The Rossing Prize is awarded to an individual who has made significant contributions toward furthering acoustics education through distinguished teaching, creation of educational materials, textbook writing and other activities. The Prize will be presented at the 170th meeting of the ASA on 4 November 2015 in Jacksonville, Florida.
“It is my great honor to receive the Rossing Prize, which has been given to outstanding scholar members of ASA since 2003. I never dreamed to be one of them.” said Kim. “I must express my deep respect and love to my friend Thomas Rossing: I have known him more than 20 years, always respect what he has done for teaching, writing books, and pioneering work in musical acoustics.”
Yang-Hann Kim is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He received a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His main research interests in acoustics began with “sound visualization” resulted in the development of the “sound camera” which makes any sound visible instantly. Then he moved to “sound manipulation.” Using his manipulation technology, one can move any sound in space and time, positioning sound, and can create a private sound zone. Sound Visualization and Manipulation, (Wiley, 2013), summarizes these two fields. Dr. Kim’s textbook, Sound Propagation: An Impedance Based Approach (John Wiley and Sons, 2010), is well acknowledged by the associated professional communities as one of best acoustics textbooks. Using his teaching experience at KAIST, he created a YouTube lecture on acoustics and vibration which is also available in MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). He has also presented lectures to over 500 engineers and technicians for the past 30 years.
###
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America—the world’s leading journal on acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The Society also holds two major scientific meetings per year. For more information about the Society visit our website, www.acousticalsociety.org.
2015.10.06 View 9789