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ISCN and GULF Share Best Practices Report
The International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) and the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) co-hosted a conference at the 2016 World Economic Forum held on January 20-23, 2016 in Davos, Switzerland, to present exemplary campus sustainability case studies provided by the world’s leading universities.
A total of 20 universities, including KAIST, Harvard University, University of Oxford, Yale University, the National University of Singapore, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich), reported on their endeavors to demonstrate sustainable development in higher education in three different panels at the conference: Developing Skills and Building Capacities, Collaborating to Catalyze Change, and Innovating for Efficient Built Environments.
President Sung-Mo Kang of KAIST gave a presentation on the Saudi Aramco-KAIST CO2 Management Center as a sustainable development model for KAIST.
KAIST and Saudi Aramco, the world’s leading fossil-fuel provider, joined forces in 2013 to establish a joint research center on the reduction and management of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a major driver of climate change.
The research center, located at the KAIST campus in Daejeon, South Korea, is currently sponsoring ten research projects involving more than 20 doctoral-level researchers and over 100 students.
The goal of the center is to develop materials for more energy-efficient CO2 capture, catalysts and processes for converting CO2 into valuable products, novel storage methods, and system-level analyses of major CO2 emitting industries to suggest industry-specific CO2 reduction strategies including energy efficiency improvement.
The center’s work also includes analyzing the impact of potential government or industry-wide policies in the face of uncertainties, some of which are technological and economic as well as political. Besides its research activities, the center has also sponsored seminars and workshops throughout the year to raise awareness of the importance of CO2 management in building a sustainable future.
President Kang said that, from the beginning, the center has prompted researchers and students with different academic backgrounds and skill sets to work together to find integrative and systematic solutions to address real problems of critical importance to the world’s sustainability.
ISCN is a global non-profit association of leading colleges and universities representing over 20 countries, working together to holistically integrate sustainability into campus operations, research, and teaching. As of now, more 75 universities worldwide are the members of ISCN.
The GULF is composed of the presidents of the top 25 universities in the world. The World Economic Forum created it in 2006 to offer a non-competitive platform for high-level dialogue in academia. KAIST is the only Korean GULF member.
For the full report of the 2016 ISCN and GULF conference, go to http://www.international-sustainable-campus-network.org/downloads/general/441-2016-iscn-gulf-best-practice-report/file.
2016.01.25 View 9356 -
'Engineered Bacterium Produces 1,3-Diaminopropane'
A research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST reported, for the first time, the production of 1,3-diaminopropane via fermentation of an engineered bacterium.
1,3-Diaminopropane is a three carbon diamine, which has a wide range of industrial applications including epoxy resin and cross-linking agents, as well as precursors for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and organic chemicals. It can also be polymerized with dicarboxylic acids to make polyamides (nylons) for use as engineering plastics, medical materials, and adhesives.
Traditionally, 1,3-diaminopropane is derived from petroleum-based processes. In effort to address critical problems such as the depletion of petroleum and environmental issues inherent to the petroleum-based processes, the research team has developed an Escherichia coli (E. coli) strain capable of producing 1,3-diaminopropane. Using this technology, 1,3-diaminopropane can now be produced from renewable biomass instead of petroleum.
E. coli as found in nature is unable to produce 1,3-diaminopropane. Metabolic engineering, a technology to transform microorganisms into highly efficient microbial cell factories capable of producing chemical compounds of interest, was utilized to engineer the E. coli strain. First, naturally existing metabolic pathways for the biosynthesis of 1,3-diaminopropane were introduced into a virtual cell in silico to determine the most efficient metabolic pathway for the 1,3-diaminopropane production. The metabolic pathway selected was then introduced into an E. coli strain and successfully produced 1,3-diaminopropane for the first time in the world.
The research team applied metabolic engineering additionally, and the production titer of 1,3-diaminopropane increased about 21 fold. The Fed-batch fermentation of the engineered E. coli strain produced 13 grams per liter of 1,3-diaminoproapne. With this technology, 1,3-diaminopropane can be produced using renewable biomass, and it will be the starting point for replacing the current petroleum-based processes with bio-based processes.
Professor Lee said, “Our study suggested a possibility to produce 1,3-diaminopropane based on biorefinery. Further study will be done to increase the titer and productivity of 1,3-diaminopropane.”
This work was published online in Scientific Reports on August 11, 2015.
Reference: Chae, T.U. et al. "Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for the production of 1,3-diaminopropane, a three carbon diamine," Scientific Reports:
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep13040
This research was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes on Systems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries from Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea.
Figure 1: Metabolic engineering strategies for 1,3-diaminopropane production using C4 pathway
Figure 2: Fed-batch fermentation profiles of two final engineered E. coli strains
2015.08.12 View 10104 -
KAIST Startups Annually Engage 33,000 People, and Their Sales Total Nearly 10 Billion Dollars
According to a recent study, KAIST startups annually engage 33,000 people, and their sales total nearly 10 billion US dollars. Also amongst 1,245 companies, 50 were listed in stock markets including KOSDAQ and KONEX. President Kang of KAIST commissioned an evaluation of KAIST startups last year. The report consisted of six chapters: current status of entrepreneurs and companies, cross analysis based on individuals’ background and academic degree, annual performance analysis, and current status of startup assistance.
The report categorized the startups with respect to the founders’ background. Of 1,245 companies, KAIST alumni founded 929 (74.6%) of the companies under study: 191 (15.3%) were located within the KAIST campuses, 91 (7.3%) were founded by enrolled students, and 74 (2.7%) by professors. The startup founders had different levels of education: 515 (41.4%) founders had master’s degree, 443 (35.6%) Ph.D. degree, and only 213 (17.1%) had only bachelor’s degree as the highest level of education attained. The reason behind the majority of founders having a master’s degree or higher degree is that many people established a startup after obtaining specialized knowledge and skills.
Focusing on the founders’ college majors, 719 (70.6%) founders were from the engineering department, 111 (10.9%) from the business administration department, 103 (10.1%) from the natural science department, and 86 (8.4%) from other departments. Looking at the companies' locations, 462 (37.5%) were placed in Seoul, 355 (28.8%) in Daejeon, and 273 (22.2%) in Gyeonggi.
By the end of 2013, the total asset of 1,069 companies came to 12 billion and 444 million dollars. Their total sales figure was 10 billion and 13 million dollars, and annual employments summed up to 33,000 people. The companies generated a significant portion of gross regional domestic product (GRDP) in each region. They formed 0.49% of GRDP of Seoul, took up 1.67% GRDP of Gyeonggi, and 5.53% of that of Daejeon.
Along with the performance analysis, the report also took a survey of suggestions on future startup assistance and opinions on current startup assistance policies. To a question asking what constituted the most difficult part of startup, 31.7% of respondents answered “attraction of investment,” 22.8% chose “a lack of human resources,” and 16.8% said “consulting” amongst 214 respondents. The study showed that major and medium enterprises face difficulty in finding human resources whereas small businesses experience obstacles attracting investment. Some startups had help from KAIST: 44 startups were provided with the office space, 21 had educational supports, and 18 were supported in research and development.
The report demonstrates that startups established by KAIST alumni and members play a key role in the South Korean economy despite KAIST’s short startup history, which began only since the end of 1990s. Based on this report, KAIST plans to listen continuously to the needs of alumni founders, and use those responses as a guide to entrepreneurship education for current students.
The Dean of the Office of University and Industry Cooperation, Joongmyeon Bae, who oversaw the publication of this report, said, "As this report is the first in Korea to study the status of alumni startups, it will be incredibly valuable in modifying the startup assistance policies.”
To spread an entrepreneurial spirit and start-up cultures in the campus and enhance the startup supporting system, KAIST has founded various startup centers on and off the campus.
2015.07.14 View 7457 -
Professor YongKeun Park Produces Undergraduate Students with International Achievements
Three undergraduate students under the supervision of Professor YongKeun Park from the Department of Physics, KAIST, have published papers in globally renowned academic journals.
The most recent publication was made by YoungJu Jo, a senior in physics. Jo’s paper entitled “Angle-resolved light scattering of individual rod-shaped bacteria based on Fourier transform light scattering” was published in the May 28th edition of Scientific Reports.
Analyzing bacteria is a very important task in the field of health and food hygiene, but using the conventional biochemical methods of analysis takes days. However, observation with Jo’s newly developed method using light scattering analyzes bacteria within a matter of seconds.
SangYeon Cho from the Department of Chemistry also published papers in Cell (2012) and Nature (2013), respectively, under the guidance of Professor Park. SangYeon Cho’s outstanding research achievements were recognized by Harvard and MIT. He was accepted with a full scholarship to Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Graduate School. He will begin his graduate studies at Harvard-MIT this September.
Last March, SeoEun Lee from the Department of Biology was the recipient of the Best Paper Award by the Optical Society of Korea. She plans to pursue a doctoral degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in New York.
Professor Park said, “Undergraduate students, who are learning a variety of subjects concurrently, are at the most creative time of their lives. KAIST has offered many opportunities to undergraduate students to partake in various research programs.”
- Picture (a) and (b): Rod-shaped bacteria’s phase image and light-scattering patterns
- Picture (c): Quantitative analysis to illustrate the extraction of information from bacteria
2014.06.03 View 11319 -
A game enthusiast received a Ph.D. at the 2014 commencement
A high school student, who was addicted to video gaming and had barely managed to gain entrance to KAIST, became a star of its 2014 commencement ceremony.
The student was Tae-Woo Park who received his Ph.D. in games at 32 years of age.
Park entered KAIST in 2002 as an undergraduate student. However, owning to bad grades, he was not accepted to the graduate school of KAIST until 2006. He began playing games at the age of 7, which distracted him from his studies at an early age. Nevertheless, he was able to complete master’s degree after two and a half years, which normally takes two years for average students.
Professor Joon-Hwa Song saw a possibility from his student’s experience of producing and commercializing a mobile puzzle game while Park was working as a president of the game club, HAJE, at KAIST. Professor Song advised him to take the advantage of his interests and try developing game platforms and contents. Park decided to develop a game that could help others and would change people’s negative views of games. He created a whole new generation of games.
In order to find ideas for games that can be easily enjoyed in daily lives, Park went to numerous gyms, swimming pools, daycare centers, and parks to analyze people’s behaviors and discussed with his colleagues who were also interested in games. During this process, the experience of organizing creative ideas through cooperation and discussions became a great foundation for his future research.
He observed some people quitting midway during a workout on treadmills because they were bored with working out alone. From this, Park embarked on developing a new style of game that allowed people to exercise together.
Park used the system on a treadmill, which recognizes the speed of the person running to automatically adjust the machine’s speed, to develop an interactive game platform for Swan Boat. The Swan Boat game is a race exercise game that adjusts the direction according to speed difference between two players. The game utilizes the difference of running speed between two people on treadmills to change the direction of the boat.
With the Swan Boat game, people can now play games and exercise at the same time. The technology also allows online access anywhere in the world, which means checking friends’ rankings at nearby gyms or homes, or even a World Gym Running Contest.
In addition, Park helped develop various next generation exercise games and life-based services, including the sparrow chirp application, which finds children that go astray, or an avatar game that utilizes the user’s daily life patterns. These results and papers attracted attention from international societies and have also won a number of awards.
Professor Song said, “There has been no precedent of receiving a Ph.D. at KAIST for developing games, however, Park’s case has given courage to many people that if you can create what is really required in everyday life, you can indeed receive a doctor’s degree.”
Park remarked, “I’d like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Professor Song, for giving me courage. I want to continue to make games that can help people’s lives in the future.”
Park will continue his work at the NASA Ames Research Center this June.
2014.02.27 View 9610 -
Technology Developed to Control Light Scattering Using Holography
Published on May 29th Nature Scientific Reports online
Recently, a popular article demonstrated that an opaque glass becomes transparent as transparent tape is applied to the glass. The scientific principle is that light is less scattered as the rough surface of the opaque glass is filled by transparent tape, thereby making things behind the opaque glass look clearer.
Professor Yong-Keun Park from KAIST’s Department of Physics, in a joint research with MIT Spectroscopy Lab, has developed a technology to easily control light scattering using holography. Their results are published on Nature’s Scientific Reports May 29th online edition.
This technology allows us to see things behind visual obstructions such as cloud and smoke, or even human skin that is highly scattering, optically thick materials. The research team applied the holography technology that records both the direction and intensity of light, and controlled light scattering of obstacles lied between an observer and a target image. The team was able to retrieve the original image by recording the information of scattered light and reflecting the light precisely to the other side.This phenomenon is known as “phase conjugation” in physics. Professor Park’s team applied phase conjugation and digital holography to observe two-dimensional image behind a highly scattering wall. “This technology will be utilized in many fields of physics, optics, nanotechnology, medical science, and even military science,” said Professor Park. “This is different from what is commonly known as penetrating camera or invisible clothes.” He nevertheless drew the line at over-interpreting the technology, “Currently, the significance is on the development of the technology itself that allows us to accurately control the scattering of light."
Figure I. Observed Images
Figure II. Light Scattering Control
2013.07.19 View 7797 -
Waking Up Is Hard to Do: Scientists have discovered a new mechanism in the core gears of the circadian clock.
The US News & World Report released an article (Feb. 18, 2011) on KAIST’s research collaboration with Northwestern University in the US to identify a gene that regulates the rhythm of a fruit fly’s circadian clock, which may be applied to explain human’s sleep-wake cycle. The research result was published February 17 in the journal Nature.
For the link of the US News & World Report article, please go to the following link:
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/waking-up-is-hard-to-do_print.html
2011.02.21 View 9497 -
Nanowire crystal transformation method was newly developed by a KAIST research team.
Figure 1
Schematic illustration of NW crystal transformation process. FeSi is converted to Fe3Si by high-temperature thermal annealing in diluted O2 condition and subsequent wet etching by 5% HF.
Figure 2
Low-resolution TEM images of FeSi; Fe3Si@SiO2 core—shell; Fe3Si NW after shell-etching; and Scale bars are 20 nm
Professor Bongsoo Kim of the Department of Chemistry, KAIST, and his research team succeeded to fabricate Heusler alloy Fe3Si nanowires by a diffusion-driven crystal structure transformation method from paramagnetic FeSi nanowires. This methodology is also applied to Co2Si nanowires in order to obtain metal-rich nanowires (Co) as another evidence of the structural transformation process. The newly developed nanowire crystal transformation method, Professor Kim said, would be valuable as a general method to fabricate metal-rich silicide nanowires that are otherwise difficult to synthesize.
Metal silicide nanowires are potentially useful in a wide array of fields including nao-optics, information technology, biosensors, and medicine. Chemical synthesis of these nanowires, however, is challenging due to the complex phase behavior of silicides.
The metal silicide nanowires are grown on a silicon substrate covered with a thin layer of silicon oxide via a simple chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process using single or multiple source precursors. Alternatively, the nanowires can be grown on the thin silicon oxide film via a chemical vapor transport (CVT) process using solid metal silicide precursors.
The CVT-based method has been highly effective for the syntheses of metal silicide NWs, but changing the composition of metal silicide NWs in a wider range, especially achieving a composition of a metal to silicon, has been quite difficult.
Thus, developing efficient and reliable synthetic methods to adjust flexibly the elemental compositions in metal silicide NWs can be valuable for the fabrication of practical spintronic and neonelectronic devices.
Professor Kim expliained, “The key concept underlying this work is metal-enrichment of metal silicide NWs by thermal diffusion. This conversion method could prove highly valuable, since novel metal-rich silicide NWs that are difficult to synthesize but possess interesting physical properties can be fabricated from other metal silicide NWs.”
The research result was published in Nanao Letters, a leading peer-reviewed journal, and posted online in early August 2010.
2010.08.25 View 10381 -
The US Science Magazine Published KAIST News on Nov. 30
An educational innovation of our university arouses world"s interest.
The world science magazine, the U.S Science reports deeply President Suh Nampyo" KAIST reform, fund, tenure review, tuition, admission and faculty recruit in News Focus, internet version on 30 November. There is full text of the news below.http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5855/1371
News FocusHIGHER EDUCATION:MIT Engineer Shakes Korean Academia to Its CoreDennis Normile
Radical measures from the new president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology are roiling a tradition-bound system
Worldly. To gain stature beyond Korea, KAIST has lured students from Vietnam, China, and Rwanda, among other countries.
CREDIT: D. NORMILE/SCIENCE
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA--When the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced on 19 November that an entrepreneur had donated $2.5 million to the university with promises of more to follow, it marked the latest in a string of coups for the new president, Suh Nam Pyo. A mechanical engineer on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Suh has raised an unprecedented amount--$12.5 million--in a country where donations to universities are rare. He"s challenging other traditions as well. For example, KAIST"s latest tenure review turned down several candidates, a shocking move by Korean standards.Suh says he is aiming to make KAIST "as good as the best [universities], including MIT." Many faculty members agree that Suh"s "overall philosophy and vision are correct," says KAIST systems biologist Lee Sang Yup. But there are concerns about how Suh will implement that vision at the 36-year-old university.
The KAIST community has reason to be cautious. In 2004, the university hired Nobel physics laureate Robert Laughlin as president--the first foreigner to lead a Korean university--with a mandate to transform KAIST into a world-class institution. Laughlin, on leave from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, proposed privatizing KAIST and charging tuition, focusing on commercialization, and tripling undergraduate enrollment (Science, 25 February 2005, p. 1181; 20 January 2006, p. 321). But when Laughlin"s plans failed to materialize, "the faculty was disappointed," says KAIST molecular biologist Chung Jongkyeong. In 2006, the board of trustees decided to seek a new president.
The board turned to Suh. Born in Gyeongju, South Korea, in 1936, Suh moved to the United States with his family as a teenager and earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As an MIT professor, Suh has won plaudits for his engineering design theories, earned more than 50 patents, and helped start several companies. In the early 1980s, he was assistant director for engineering at the U.S. National Science Foundation, and he headed MIT"s Department of Mechanical Engineering from 1991 until 2001.
Since arriving at KAIST in July 2006, Suh has opened undergraduate education to non-Korean students for the first time by insisting that many courses be taught in English. Suh decided that students who maintain "B" or better grades would continue to pay no tuition, whereas those with a "C" or below must pay about $16,000 per year starting in February. "We want students to take responsibility for their actions," Suh says.
Agent of change. KAIST"s faculty supports Suh Nam Pyo"s reforms, so far.
CREDIT: KAIST
A new admissions process may also have broad impact. Previously, KAIST, like most of Korea"s top universities, selected the top scorers in a written exam. Most high school students spend their free time prepping for these tests in cram schools. But Suh says that scores "are a one-dimensional measure" that fails to identify leaders. So candidates for KAIST"s next incoming class were invited to campus this fall for interviews, to give presentations, and to engage in discussions while being observed by faculty members, who made selections based on scores and personal impressions. "We"re looking for future Einsteins and future Bill Gateses," says Suh.An even more radical step was putting teeth into tenure reviews. Traditionally, faculty members in Korea gain tenure after logging enough years. Suh insisted that KAIST professors up for tenure gather endorsements from experts in their field around the world. In September, 11 of 33 applicants were denied tenure and were given a year to find new jobs.
The tenure review "is the beginning of an educational revolution," says KAIST chemist Ryoo Ryong. But he and others worry about the fate of those denied tenure. Suh understands their predicament but is standing firm. The professors who didn"t make tenure "are very good people, but in terms of the standard we set, they"re not as good as we expect our professors to be." He is asking other universities to consider giving these professors a chance.
At the same time, Suh is looking to inject fresh blood--including foreigners--into the 418-strong faculty with a plan to add 300 professors over the next 4 to 5 years. (To expand the school, Suh is striving to win government approval for a doubling of KAIST"s base governmental support of $108 million.) His first catch is Mary Kathryn Thompson, who completed her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT last year. "It"s an exciting time to be here," says Thompson, who just started studying Korean when she arrived last August.
Although they support Suh"s initiatives, some faculty members chafe at his blunt public comments implying that Korea"s professors take life too easy. "I cannot agree," says Choi Yang-Kyu, an electrical engineer. "Most professors here are working very hard." Biomolecular engineer Kim Hak-Sung adds: "President Suh should have sticks and carrots, not just sticks."
Carrots don"t come cheap. "I"m spending most of my time trying to raise money," Suh says. Part of that effort is wooing private donors. "Giving to universities is not prevalent in Asia, but it is something I"m trying to nurture in Korea," he says. That"s a precedent all of Korea"s universities might want to embrace.
2007.11.30 View 14849