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New director of National Nano Fab Center was named.
Professor Ki-Ro Lee from the Electrical Engineering Department of KAIST has been appointed as the new Director of National Nano Fab Center, an affiliated institute to KAIST and will serve the position for three years beginning from May 4, 2010.
Director Lee graduated from Seoul National University in 1976 and received his doctoral degree from University of Minnesota, Twincities, the US, in 1983. He has taught at the Electrical Engineering Department since 1986. While at KAIST, he served as the dean of research affairs from 1998-200 and 2004-2005, respectively. From 2005 to 2007, he worked as the Director of LG Advanced Institute of Technology.
2010.05.19 View 11528 -
The 6th president of KAIST passed away on May 7, 2010.
Dr. Sang-Soo Lee was the first president of Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS) and the 6th president of KAIST, who died of a chronic disease at the age of 85. The KAIS was the matrix of KAIST today. Graduated from the physics department of Seoul National University in 1949, he later received a doctoral degree in optics from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London.
Dr. Lee has greatly contributed to the development of science and technology in Korea in the capacity of a policy administrator, educator, scientist, researcher, and engineer. He held numerous prestigious offices including President of Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in 1967, of KAIS in 172, and of KAIST in 1989. Dr. Lee also worked as a professor at the physics department of KAIST for 20 years from 1972-1992.
The Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), an international society for optics and photonics, was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Dr. Sang-Soo Lee was a member of the SPIE that issued a news release expressing its sincere condolences to his death. The following is the full text of the news release: http://spie.org/x40527.xml
In memoriam: Sang Soo Lee
10 May 2010
Sang Soo Lee, known as the "Father of Optics" in Korea passed away on May 7, 2010, in Korea. He was 84.
Lee received a B.S. in Physics from Seoul National University in Korea and a Ph.D. from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, UK. Receiving the first Ph.D. in Optics in Korea, Dr. Lee devoted his life to lay the foundation for optical science and engineering for more than four decades as an educator, researcher, and administrator in science policy.
"He was one of the architects of the extraordinary and rapid emergence of Korea as a world leader in science and technology, or perhaps with the rich history of contributions centuries ago, re-emergence would be more appropriate." said Eugene G. Arthurs, SPIE Executive Director.
During his teaching career, Dr. Lee mentored 50 doctoral and more than 100 masters" degree candidates. in the areas of laser physics, wave optics, and quantum optics. Many of his former students have become leaders in academia, government-funded research institutes, and industry both in Korea and abroad. He published more than 250 technical papers and authored five textbooks, including "Wave Optics", "Geometrical Optics", "Quantum Optics", and "Laser Speckles and Holography".
Lee was the first president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and the first president to establish a new government funded graduate school. He played a pivotal role in founding the Optical Society of Korea (OSK) in 1989 and served as its first president.
Lee was an active member of the international scientific community. In addition to his pioneering scholastic achievements at KAIST, he served as the Vice President of the International Commission for Optics (ICO), a Council Member of the Third World Academy of Sciences, and a Council Member of UN University, serving as an ambassador for the optics community, which showed a significant example of how a developing country like Korea can serve international optics community.
Dr. Lee was a Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), the Optical Society of America (OSA), and the Korean Physical Society (KPS). He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including the National Order of Civil Merit that is the Presidential Medal of Honor from the Republic of Korea (2000), the Songgok Academic Achievement Prize, the Presidential Award for Science, and the Medal of Honor for Distinguished Scientific Achievement in Korea. In 2006, he was awarded OSA"s Esther Hoffman Beller Medal.
2010.05.19 View 14563 -
A donation to KAIST by a gambler
The Korea Herald ran an editorial on the news that a man who won the biggest-ever jackpot in Korean casino history on Saturday, May 15, 2010, decided to donate the entire prize money to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Below is the full text of the editorial published on May 18, 2010.
http://www.koreaherald.com/opinion/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100518000648
The Korea Herald: [Editorial] Gambler’s donation
2010-05-18 18:09
KAIST, Korea’s leading research university, often makes news with donations from a variety of benefactors who wish to help develop science and technology in Korea with money they earned through their careers. The list of donors, which includes farmers, securities dealers, medical doctors, foreign businesspeople and popular entertainers, now has one unusual entry, a gambler.
Ahn Seung-pil, 60, may not be exactly a “gambler” – at least not a professional one. He has visited Kangwon Land, a casino located in the mountain region of Jeongseon, Gangwon Province, only a few times since it opened in 2000 as the only place Korean nationals could gamble. Ahn, who runs a small textile business in Seoul, hit the jackpot of 766 million won (about $665,000), the largest amount ever at Kangwon Land or from any slot machine at a Korean casino.
He said he was motivated to donate the money to KAIST in Daejeon City when he watched a television program after returning home, in which a professor emphasized the importance of advancing science and technology in the country. He had incurred heavy debts during the 1997 economic crisis and has yet to clear them all, but he thought of using the prize money for a good cause. The TV program guided him to KAIST, said Ahn, who has “not had a high level of education.”
Korea is known worldwide for its people’s strong zeal for university education. Parents do whatever they can to send their children to good universities but are so exhausted before the entrance that they barely pay the tuition once they get there. Universities have to rely mainly on tuition and meager subsidies from foundations or the state treasury. Private donations are rare, compared to European or American universities.
Major universities complain that members of the alumni societies are rather indifferent to calls for donation. The majority of donors who give significant amounts are people who weren’t lucky enough to go to university, such as Ahn Seung-pil.
2010.05.19 View 12508 -
1,180 meters of fence on campus facing Gap-Chun River will be gone by June 2010.
KAIST and the City of Daejeon have taken on a project to remove a stretch of fence on campus that faces Gap-Chun River, making the campus accessible to all citizens and visitors. The work will last for three months beginning on April 5th and throughout June 2010. Gradually, KAIST plans to remove the entire fence surrounding the campus within a few years.
The city government has encouraged government and public organizations in Daejeon to open up their public space to citizens and visitors as part of its initiatives to reach out to local communities. As of December 2008, seven public organizations have completed to rid of their boundary markers, and eight more organizations will make their gardens and campus available to the public by the end of this year.
All the expenses related to the removal of the fence will be borne by the city government. At the place where the fence is knocked down will become a park so that neighbors and visitors can come and rest.
A school official said, “This is an important campaign for us because it promotes more exchanges between the university and local community. Our campus has rich green foliage, and visitors will surely enjoy it. By opening up our campus to the public, we hope to return to the society what we have received as a public institution and create a forum where art, science, and technology meet together.”
In addition to the removal of the fence, KAIST and the city government will install flowerbeds, health facilities, and walking trails for the citizens.
2010.04.26 View 9979 -
Professor Eun-Seong Kim and his research staff observed the phenomena of hysteresis and relaxation dynamics from supersolid Helium
Professor Eun-Seong Kim and his research staff observed the phenomena of hysteresis and relaxation dynamics from supersolid Helium.
Their research paper was published in Nature Physics for the issue of April 2010.
If we take Helium 4 and cool it down at temperatures below 2.176 Kelivin, liquid helium 4 undergoes a phase transition and becomes superfluid with a zero viscosity. The superfluidity was observed in solid helium through an experiment performed by researchers of Pennsylvania State University in 2004. One of the researchers then was Professor Eun-Seong Kim in the Department of Physics, KAIST.
Professor Kim and his research staff, Hyung-Soon Choi, Ph.D., recently published their research results in Nature Physics (April 2010), a highly esteemed journal in the field, on the phenomena of hysteresis and relaxation dynamics observed in supersolid Helium.
For the paper, please download the attached .pdf file.
Nature Physics link: http://www.nature.com
2010.04.13 View 13289 -
News Article: Naro space rocket getting ready for second launch, April 12, 2010
News Article on KIAST published on April 12, 2010
The Korea Herald, 2010-04-12 17:07
Naro space rocket getting ready for second launch
By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldm.com)
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is checking on the second launch of Naro, Korea’s first space rocket, as all the necessary parts were transferred to the launch center last week.
The Science Technology Satellite No. 2 was transferred last Thursday from the KAIST Satellite Technology Research Center in Daejeon to the Naro Space Center in South Jeolla Province, said ministry officials.
The solid-fuel second-stage rocket reached the center last Monday and the liquid-fuel first-stage rocket did so on March 23. The latter was manufactured in Russia’s Khrunichev State Space Science and Production Center.
The satellite, a small one weighing 100 kilograms, was co-developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, KAIST SaTReC and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology.
It is to revolve around the Earth for two years collecting data on climate change by gauging the hydrogen content in the atmosphere, said officials.
“With all the crucial parts ready here in the center, we have officially kicked off our final investigation before setting the details of the second Naro launch,” said a ministry official.
Second Vice Minister Kim Joong-hyun last week visited the Naro center to attend the overall inspection on all facilities related to the rocket launch.
The date has not yet been set for the second launch but will be fixed within this month, said officials.
With the general inspection completed on the facilities, the first-stage rocket and the satellite will be assembled and the combination will be joined by the second-stage rocket in May.
The first launching attempt ended in failure in August due to faulty electrical wiring or a mechanical problem in the fairing separation mechanism, according to panels.
The two fairings -- used to cover and protect the satellite placed on top of the Naro -- failed to separate timely and thus stopped the satellite from gaining sufficient velocity to reach its planned orbit.
Korea has so far spent 502.4 billion won ($428.1 million) on the Naro project since it began in August 2002.
2010.04.13 View 14644
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A KAIST graduate to become a professor at a prestigious university in UAE
A KAIST graduate to become a professor at a prestigious university in UAE
Dr. Jerald Yoo, a KAIST graduate, has been appointed as an assistant professor at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), by the recommendation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since April 1, 2010.
The MIST is a private, not-for-profit, independent, research-driven institute developed with the support and cooperation of MIT and the Abu Dhabi government, which was opened in September 2009. Currently, at the school, there are 25 professors and 100 students from 22 countries around the world. The institute has a campus in Masdar City where the Abu Dhabi government plans to nurture it as a “place for zero carbon emissions.”
According to an agreement between the MIST and MIT, Professor Yoo will teach and work on co-research projects at MIT for one year beginning in May 2010 and then working at the MIST thereafter.
Professor Yoo received all of his degrees (BS, MS, and Ph.D.) from KAIST majoring in electrical engineering and earned his doctoral degree in January 2010. His research works included developing a wearable patch to monitor bio signals with an application of wearable sensor networks and low energy electronic circuit technologies. During his doctoral study, Professor Yoo published papers at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and in journals of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS).
Professor Yoo said, "The wearable health care system is certainly necessary to improve the quality of our lives, and the field should receive a sustaining support for further research. I will do my best to continuously produce valuable research results and hope that my research works will be helpful for an academic exchange between South Korea and Abu Dhabi.”
About the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Abu Dhabi:
http://www.masdar.ac.ae/
The Masdar Institute is the centerpiece of the Masdar Initiative, a landmark program announced in April 2006 by the government of Abu Dhabi to establish an entirely new economic sector dedicated to alternative and sustainable energy. Masdar is a highly-strategic initiative with primary objectives of: helping drive the economic diversification of Abu Dhabi; maintaining and expanding Abu Dhabi"s position in evolving global energy markets; positioning Abu Dhabi as a developer of technology; and making a meaningful contribution towards sustainable human development.
The Masdar Institute is a private, not-for-profit, independent, research-driven institute developed with the support and cooperation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Institute offers Masters and (eventually) PhD programs in science and engineering disciplines, with a focus on advanced energy and sustainable technologies. It welcomes and encourages applications from qualified local and international students and provides fellowships to talented students who meet its high admission standards. Its faculty is of the highest quality and the intent is to have the structure of its top administration similar to MIT"s.
2010.04.13 View 13582 -
"The 2010 Artificial Intelligence Robot War Competition" begins to receive applications
[Event Notice]
“The 2010 Artificial Intelligence Robot War Competition” begins to receive applications
A good opportunity to gauge the intelligence of your robots
“The 2010 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Robot War Competition” will be held in October 2010, and the Competition has been receiving applications from contestants since April 1st. The deadline for the application will be May 31st, 2010.
Qualified contestants must be a minimum of two, but less than six, team members, and they will compete in one of the two fields: System on Chip (SoC) Taekwon Robot and Humanoid Robot (HURO). Winners will be decided based on the intelligence capabilities presented by a robot’s platform that mimics key functions of the human brain.
SoC Taekwon Robot will compete against one another by using a camera installed on its head to recognize visual images, locations, distances, and gestures of the other competing robot.
HURO competition is a new entry begun this year, and winners will be determined in accordance with the robot’s ability to perform given missions and fights. Missions are to go through a track installed with obstacles, recognize colors and shapes of barriers, and knock down barriers to earn scores. Fighting will be performed in the form of a Korean martial art, Tae-kwon-do.
The Korean government has nominated Robotics as one of the key growth engines to develop IT industry and Korean economy. Robotics converge many of different engineering fields, such as machinery, materials, components, and embedded software. In particular, the SoC is an essential technology for Korea to continuously take lead in the semi-conductor industry in the world, which is an important element for robotics.
SoC stands for System on Chip, an integrated chip that assembles various chips and components to be fabricated together on a single chip, instead of building them on a circuit board. The SoC technology has advantages of higher performance, smaller space requirements, lower memory requirements, higher system reliability, and lower consumer costs.
An artificial intelligence SoC robot is autonomous because it can adapt itself to changes in various environments and reach a given goal without constantly receiving external orders.
For details of the event, please refer to the website of www.socrobotwar.org.
2010.04.06 View 13667
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Interesting research results were published on the use of Twitter.
The number of “followers” on your Twitter account does not necessarily mean that “Your opinions matter much” to other people.
A KAIST graduate researcher, Mi-Young Cha, joined an interesting project that studies the influence of a popular social media, Twitter. Most of Twitter users today consider the number of followers as a measurement of their influence on the social sphere. According to the research paper, however, this connection does not seem to standing together. For details, please click the link below for an article published by the New York Times.
Dr. Cha received all of her post secondary education degrees in Computer Science, including her Ph.D. in 2008, from KAIST. Since 2008 till now, she has been a post doctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) based in Germany.
[New York Times Article, March 19, 2010]
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/03/19/19readwriteweb-the-million-follower-fallacy-audience-size-d-3203.html
2010.04.05 View 14177
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New drug targeting method for microbial pathogens developed using in silico cell
A ripple effect is expected on the new antibacterial discovery using “in silico” cells
Featured as a journal cover paper of Molecular BioSystems
A research team of Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee at KAIST recently constructed an in silico cell of a microbial pathogen that is resistant to antibiotics and developed a new drug targeting method that could effectively disrupt the pathogen"s growth using the in silico cell.
Hyun Uk Kim, a graduate research assistant at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, conducted this study as a part of his thesis research, and the study was featured as a journal cover paper in the February issue of Molecular BioSystems this year, published by The Royal Society of Chemistry based in Europe.
It was relatively easy to treat infectious microbes using antibiotics in the past. However, the overdose of antibiotics has caused pathogens to increase their resistance to various antibiotics, and it has become more difficult to cure infectious diseases these days.
A representative microbial pathogen is Acinetobacter baumannaii. Originally isolated from soils and water, this microorganism did not have resistance to antibiotics, and hence it was easy to eradicate them if infected. However, within a decade, this miroorganism has transformed into a dreadful super-bacterium resistant to antibiotics and caused many casualties among the U.S. and French soldiers who were injured from the recent Iraqi war and infected with Acinetobacter baumannaii.
Professor Lee’s group constructed an in silico cell of this A. baumannii by computationally collecting, integrating, and analyzing the biological information of the bacterium, scattered over various databases and literatures, in order to study this organism"s genomic features and system-wide metabolic characteristics. Furthermore, they employed this in silico cell for integrative approaches, including several network analysis and analysis of essential reactions and metabolites, to predict drug targets that effectively disrupt the pathogen"s growth. Final drug targets are the ones that selectively kill pathogens without harming human body.
Here, essential reactions refer to enzymatic reactions required for normal metabolic functioning in organisms, while essential metabolites indicate chemical compounds required in the metabolism for proper functioning, and their removal brings about the effect of simultaneously disrupting their associated enzymes that interact with them.
This study attempted to predict highly reliable drug targets by systematically scanning biological components, including metabolic genes, enzymatic reactions, that constitute an in silico cell in a short period of time.
This research achievement is highly regarded as it, for the first time, systematically scanned essential metabolites for the effective drug targets using the concept of systems biology, and paved the way for a new antibacterial discovery. This study is also expected to contribute to elucidating the infectious mechanism caused by pathogens.
"Although tons of genomic information is poured in at this moment, application research that efficiently converts this preliminary information into actually useful information is still lagged behind. In this regard, this study is meaningful in that medically useful information is generated from the genomic information of Acinetobacter baumannii," says Professor Lee. "In particular, development of this organism"s in silico cell allows generation of new knowledge regarding essential genes and enzymatic reactions under specific conditions," he added.
This study was supported by the Korean Systems Biology Project of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and the patent for the development of in silico cells of microbial pathogens and drug targeting methods has been filed.
[Picture 1 Cells in silico]
[Picture 2 A process of generating drug targets without harming human body while effectively disrupting the growth of a pathogen, after predicting metabolites from in silico cells]
2010.04.05 View 17301
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New Text Book on Chemistry Published by KAIST Professor and Student
A chemistry textbook written in English and Korean will aid Korean students to learn General Chemistry in a global academic setting.
Korean students majoring in chemistry and looking for an opportunity to study abroad will have a new, handy textbook that presents them with a practical introduction to an English speaking lecture on general chemistry.
Aiming for advanced Korean high school and college/university students, the inter-language textbook is written by two incumbent professors teaching chemistry at a university in Korea and the US. The book will help Korean students prepare for a classroom where various topics of general chemistry are presented and discussed in English. Clear, collated sections of English and Korean text provide the student with sufficient explanation of the rudimentary topics and concepts.
Composed of 15 chapters on the core subjects of General Chemistry, i.e., Stoichiometry and Chemical Reactions, Thermochemistry, Atomic Structure, and Bonding, the textbook includes essential English vocabulary and usage sections for each chapter; it also contains a pre-reading study guide on the subject that prepares the student for listening to a lecture. This section includes view-graph type slides, audio files, and follow-up questions the student can use to prepare for an English-speaking course. The various accompanying audio files are prepared to expose the student to English scientific dialogue and serve as examples for instruction at Korean secondary and tertiary schools.
The book was coauthored by Korean and American scientists: A father and son, who have taught chemistry at an American and Korean university, wrote the book. Professor Melvyn R. Churchill at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Professor David G. Churchill at KAIST prepared all of the technical English text which was adapted from General Chemistry course lecture notes; the text was further shaped by original perspectives arising from many student interactions and questions.
This English text was translated into Korean by Professor Kwanhee Lee from the Department of Life and Food Science at Handong Global University, who coauthored a previous preparatory book for Korean students in a different subject. He also supplied an important introductory section which serves as a general guide to the classroom student. Kibong Kim, a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry at KAIST, helped in preparing the book as well.
“This has been definitely a collaborative undertaking with an international academic crew and it underscores that the Korean internationalization in science is mainstream. Professors and a Korean student created a new book for Korean consumption and benefit,” Professor David G. Churchill says.
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Bibliography: “How to Prepare for General Chemistry Taught in English” by David George Churchill, Melvyn Rowen Churchill, Kwanhee Lee & Kibong Kim, Darakwon Publishing, Paju, Republic of Korea, 2010, 400 pp, ISBN 978-89-5995-730-9 (1 Audio CD included)
2010.04.02 View 15393
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Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of the Kingdom of Denmark visited KAIST on March 11, 2010.
Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of the Kingdom of Denmark visited KAIST on March 11, 2010. HUBO, a humanoid robotdeveloped by KAIST, gave a warm welcome to the prime minister and his delegation.
Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Denmark visited Moon-Ji Campus of KAIST on March 11, 2010 and had a chance to meet a humanoid robot, HUBO. Since the first appearance in 2005, HUBO has been continuously developed by KAIST for further refinements.
HUBO welcomed the prime minister and offered him a flower bouquet. They also shook hands and exchanged small talks in Danish, which made the delegation pleasantly surprised.
The Danish delegation had a ride on Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) and showed a great interest in the technology applied therein.
The prime minister said, “Denmark has a keen interest in green technology, and I was very impressed by OLEV. It is just amazing to see how fast KAIST has developed as an outstanding research university in the world during a short period of time.”
President Lee Myung-bak invited the Danish prime minister to discuss current international developments, including issues involving the Korean Peninsula, and ways to enhance bilateral cooperation in such areas as trade, investment, renewable energy and green growth.
2010.03.17 View 13594