Graduate
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MOU between KAIST and DTU Signed
KAIST and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate in the areas of startup, student exchange, and joint research on October 25, 2016 at the Embassy of Denmark in Seoul, Korea. Under the agreement, KAIST and DTU will exchange students and researchers through startup programs and continue to collaborating in education and research.
The MOU was facilitated during the Green Growth Alliance Meeting and Energy Seminar hosted by the Danish embassy, in which Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen participated.
President Steve Kang of KAIST, who fostered the agreement, said,
“DTU has been one of our strategic partners in Europe. We have been working closely with them on academic exchanges and research collaborations, but now with the expansion of our cooperation into entrepreneurship, we will create momentum to spur startups in both schools. To support such activities, we will use KAIST’s experiences acquired from operating the K-School, an entrepreneurship graduate school, and the Institute of KAIST Entrepreneurship. DTU will also share their knowledge on startup programs including SkyLab and StartDTU. I believe this will become another successful alliance between the two universities.”
As of October 2016, KAIST has made 18 agreements with DTU, exchanging 120 students in the past three years and implementing various joint seminars and conferences for academic and research exchanges.
Established in 1829, DTU has been a leading science and technology university in Denmark. It ranked 109 in the QS World University Rankings 2016 and 46th in its subject rankings in engineering and technology.
In the picture below, President Steve Kang of KAIST (right) and Senior Vice President Martin P. Bendsøe of the Technical University of Denmark (left) are signing an agreement for academic and research cooperation.
2016.10.27 View 8357 -
2016 KAIST EEWS Workshop
The Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability (EEWS) Graduate School of KAIST hosted a workshop entitled “Progress and Perspectives of Energy Science and Technology” on October 20, 2016. The workshop took place at the Fusion Hall of the KAIST Institute on campus.
About 400 experts in energy science and engineering participated in the event. Eight globally recognized scientists introduced the latest research trends in nanomaterials, energy theory, catalysts, and photocatalysts and led discussions on the current status and prospects of EEWS.
Professors Yi Cui of Stanford University, an expert in nanomaterials, and William A. Goddard of California Institute of Technology presented their research experiments on materials design and recent results on the direction of theory under the topics of energy and environment.
Dr. Miquel Salmeron, a former head of the Material Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Professor Yuichi Ikuhara of Tokyo University introduced their analysis of catalysts and energy matters at an atomic scale.
Professor Sukbok Chang of the Chemistry Department at KAIST, a deputy editor of ACS Catalysis and the head of the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations at the Institute of Basic Science, and Professor Yang-Kook Sun of Energy Engineering at Hanyang University, who is also a deputy editor of ACS Energy Letters, presented their latest research results on new catalytic reaction development and energy storage.
The workshop consisted of three sections which addressed the design of energy and environment materials; analysis of energy and catalytic materials; and energy conversion and catalysts.
The EEWS Graduate School was established in 2008 with the sponsorship of the Korean government’s World Class University (WCU) project to support science education in Korea. Professor J. Fraser Stoddart, the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was previously worked at the KAIST EEWS Graduate School as a WCU visiting professor for two years, from 2011 to 2013. Professor Ali Coskun, who was a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Professor Stoddart, now teaches and conducts research as a full-time professor at the graduate school.
Dean Yousung Jung of the EEWS Graduate School said:
“This workshop has provided us with a meaningful opportunity to engage in discussions on energy science and technology with world-class scholars from all around the world. It is also a good venue for our graduate school to share with them what we have been doing in research and education.”
2016.10.20 View 13672 -
J. Fraser Stoddart, a Former Visiting Professor at KAIST, Wins the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
J. Fraser Stoddart, who is Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry and head of the Stoddart Mechanostereochemistry Group, received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He shares it with Professor Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg in France and Professor Bernard Feringa of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Professor Stoddart’s relationship with KAIST dates to his term as a visiting professor from 2011 to 2013 at the Environment, Energy, Water and Sustainability (EEWS) Graduate School. The Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Professor Stoddart in recognition of his pioneering work on artificial molecular machines, a.k.a., nanomachines.
A molecular machine is an assembly of a discrete number of molecular components designed to perform machine-like movements as the result of appropriate external stimuli. Like their counterparts in the macroscopic world, molecular machines control mechanical movements and rotations in response to an energy input such as chemical reactions, light, or temperature. The most complex molecular machines, for example, are proteins in cells. Chemists have attempted to imitate these structures for potential applications including smart nanomedicines to track diseases such as cancer cells and deliver drugs to fight them. Other applications include next-generation miniature semiconductor chips, sensors, energy storage, space exploration, and armaments.
In 1991, Professor Stoddart developed artificial molecular machines based on a rotaxane. A rotaxane is a mechanically-interlocked molecular architecture in which a dumbbell-shaped molecule is encircled by a molecular ring called a macrocycle. He presented important research on the production of rotaxanes and demonstrated that a macrocycle could move along or rotate freely around the axle, a dumbbell-shaped molecule.
Professor Stoddart is also an expert in molecular electronics using molecules on the nanoscale as switches in computers and other electronic devices. In 2007, he created a large-scale ultra-dense memory device with reconfigurable molecular switches, the size of white blood cells but capable of storing information. This was a significant achievement towards the development of molecular computers that are much smaller and more powerful compared to today’s silicon-based computers.
KAIST has enjoyed a strong relationship with Professor Stoddart since he served as a visiting professor at the EEWS Graduate School from 2011 to 2013. The graduate school invited him to participate in the Korean government’s science and education program to foster world-class universities in the nation. At KAIST, he taught a course entitled “Nanomachines at the Scale of Molecules.” He also collaborated with Korean researchers on various projects including the publication of a joint research paper, “A Radically Configurable Six-State Compound,” in Science (January 25, 2013) with Professor Jang Wook Choi from the EEWS Graduate School and researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia.
Two doctors with KAIST ties have links to Professor Stoddart as well. In 2012, Dr. Ali Coskun, who worked with him as a postdoctoral research associate at Northwestern University, became an associate professor at the EEWS Graduate School where he conducts research on secondary batteries and gas storage with artificial molecular machines. Dr. Dong Jun Kim, a KAIST graduate, has been working at the Stoddart Mechanostereochemistry Group as a postdoctoral fellow since 2015.
Picture 1: Synthesis of a Rotaxane Described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) in 1991
Picture 2: Professor J. Fraser Stoddart Giving a Presentation at a Workshop Hosted by the EEWS Graduate School at KAIST in 2011
2016.10.13 View 8951 -
Direct Utilization of Elemental Sulfur for Microporous Polymer Synthesis
Using elemental sulfur as an alternative chemical feedstock, KAIST researchers have produced novel microporous polymers to sift CO2 from methane in natural-gas processing.
Methane, a primary component of natural gas, has emerged recently as an important energy source, largely owing to its abundance and relatively clean nature compared with other fossil fuels. In order to use natural gas as a fuel, however, it must undergo a procedure called “hydrodesulfurization” or “natural gas sweetening” to reduce sulfur-dioxide emissions from combustion of fossil fuels. This process leads to excessive and involuntary production of elemental sulfur. Although sulfur is one of the world’s most versatile and common elements, it has relatively few large-scale applications, mostly for gunpowder and sulfuric acid production.
Thus, the development of synthetic and processing methods to convert sulfur into useful chemicals remains a challenge. A research team led by Professor Ali Coskun from the Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability) at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has recently introduced a new approach to resolving this problem by employing elemental sulfur directly in the synthesis of microporous polymers for the process of natural-gas sweetening.
Natural gas, containing varying amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), is generally treated with amine solutions, followed by the regeneration of these solutions at increased temperatures to release captured CO2 and H2S. A two-step separation is involved in removing these gases. The amine solutions first remove H2S, and then CO2 is separated from methane (CH4) with either amine solutions or porous sorbents such as microporous polymers.
Using elemental sulfur and organic linkers, the research team developed a solvent and catalyst-free strategy for the synthesis of ultramicroporous benzothiazole polymers (BTAPs) in quantitative yields. BTAPs were found to be highly porous and showed exceptional physiochemical stability. In-situ chemical impregnation of sulfur within the micropores increased CO2 affinity of the sorbent, while limiting diffusion of CH4. BTAPs, as low-cost, scalable solid-sorbents, showed outstanding CO2 separation ability for flue gas, as well as for natural and landfill gas conditions.
The team noted that: “Each year, millions of tons of elemental sulfur are generated as a by-product of petroleum refining and natural-gas processing, but industries and businesses lacked good ideas for using it. Our research provides a solution: the direct utilization of elemental sulfur into the synthesis of ultramicroporous polymers that can be recycled back into an efficient and sustainable process for CO2 separation. Our novel polymeric materials offer new possibilities for the application of a little-used natural resource, sulfur, to provide a sustainable solution to challenging environmental issues.”
This work was published online in Chem on September 8, 2016 and also highlighted in C&EN (Chemical & Engineering News) by the American Chemical Society (ACS) on September 19, 2016. The research paper was entitled “Direct Utilization of Elemental Sulfur in the Synthesis of Microporous Polymers for Natural Gas Sweetening.” (DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2016.08.003)
Figure 1. A Schematic Image of Direct Utilization of Elemental Sulfur
This image shows direct utilization of elemental sulfur in the synthesis of microporous polymers and its gas separation performance.
Figure 2. BTAP’s Breakthrough Experiment under Pre-mixed Gas Conditions
This data presents the breakthrough measurements for CO2-containing binary gas-mixture streams with different feed-gas compositions to investigate the CO2 capture capacity of ultramicroporous benzothiazole polymers (BTAPs) for large-scale applications under simulated conditions of natural and landfill gases.
2016.10.05 View 9427 -
Professor Lee to Head the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology
Emeritus Professor In Lee of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at KAIST was appointed to the post of President of the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) in Ethiopia. His term will begin on August 1, 2016 and end on July 31, 2018, which can be extended up to five years.
AAiT is an affiliated institute of Addis Ababa University, a distinguished national university in Ethiopia, and specializes in education and research in engineering and technology. There are currently 5,500 undergraduate and 4,500 graduate students enrolled at the institute.
The Ethiopian government has recognized the importance of science and technology for the future of the country. The government intends to develop AAiT into a distinguished research university similar to KAIST, and thus sought advice from KAIST to recommend an administrator who will head AAiT. Upon recommendation by KAIST President Steve Kang, Professor Lee was appointed.
Professor Lee graduated from Seoul National University with bachelor's and master’s degrees in aeronautical engineering and earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics from Stanford University.
He has served as the President of The Korean Society for Aeronautics and Space Sciences, the Director of the KAIST Satellite Technology Research Center, and a Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Center.
2016.08.03 View 9344 -
'The 2016 Top 100 Research Projects in Korea'
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) of Korea recently released a list of the 2016 Top 100 Research Projects in Korea. The list included the work of KAIST Professors Dong-Ho Cho of the School of Electrical Engineering, Jeung Ku Kang of the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability (EEWS), and Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department.
Experts from academia, universities, and industries selected the 100 research projects, among 620 projects recommended by various government offices, in consideration of their contribution to the growth of science and technology in the nation.
Professor Cho conducts research on the development of 5G mobile communication systems based on the pattern polarization beam-division multiple access method.
Professor Kang works on the production of highly efficient energy materials and equipment by controlling them at the electron and atomic level.
Professor Lee focuses on the creation of strategies to produce important chemicals through a biological approach, i.e., microorganisms, which will help develop the means to mitigate climate change.
The MISP will publish a book that describes in detail each research project and will distribute copies of it to the National Assembly of Korea, libraries, and other public organizations.
For more information on the list, please go to www.ntis.go.kr.
Pictured from left to right are Professors Dong-Ho Cho, Jeung Ku Kang, and Sang Yup Lee.
2016.07.21 View 5498 -
Special Lecture by Professor Sung-Hou Kim of UC Berkeley
As part of its special lecture series, the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST has invited Professor Sung-Hou Kim of the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, to lecture on his research in structural biology. He will speak twice on May 23 and 30, respectively, on the topics “Origin of Universe and Earth—A Narrative” and “Origin of Life and Human Species—A Narrative.”
Professor Kim's research addresses the structural basis of molecules to reveal how they communicate with each other to activate or inhibit particular processes in cell growth, cell differentiation, and cancer. Using the single-crystal X-ray diffraction technology, he discovered, for the first time in the world, the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of a transfer RNA (t-RNA) and received much praise for this work from the scientific community. Since then, he has been cited as a candidate for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for many years.
He also examined the 3-D structures of a RAS protein in normal and cancer cells and identified the mutations of the RAS protein as a cause for cancer. His work has assisted in the development of target drugs for cancer treatment. In recent years, he has adopted a computational biology approach to study the structure and function of biological genomics, with which he has tried to predict disease-sensitive genes.
Professor Kim graduated from Seoul National University in 1962 and received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in the United States in 1966. He worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a senior research scientist, and has taught at UC Berkeley since 1978.
2016.05.23 View 7466 -
KAIST Researchers Receive the 2016 IEEE William R. Bennett Prize
A research team led by Professors Yung Yi and Song Chong from the Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST has been awarded the 2016 William R. Bennett Prize of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which is the most prestigious award in the field of communications network. The IEEE bestows the honor annually and selects winning papers from among those published in the past three years for its quality, originality, scientific citation index, and peer reviews.
The IEEE award ceremony will take place on May 24, 2016 at the IEEE International Conference on Communications in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The team members include Dr. Kyoung-Han Lee, a KAIST graduate, who is currently a professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea, Dr. Joo-Hyun Lee, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University in the United States, and In-Jong Rhee, a vice president of the Mobile Division at Samsung Electronics. The same KAIST team previously received the award back in 2013, making them the second recipient ever to win the IEEE William R. Bennett Prize twice.
Past winners include Professors Robert Gallager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sachin Katti of Stanford University, and Ion Stoica of the University of California at Berkeley.
The research team received the Bennett award for their work on “Mobile Data Offloading: How Much Can WiFi Deliver?” Their research paper has been cited more than 500 times since its publication in 2013. They proposed an original method to effectively offload the cellular network and maximize the Wi-Fi network usage by analyzing the pattern of individual human mobility in daily life.
2016.05.02 View 14446 -
KAIST Hosts the 2016 IPFGRU
More than 120 senior representatives from 65 universities around the world will convene this month in Seoul to discuss the social responsibilities of higher education and strategic global partnerships among academia, research, and industry to advance socio-economic values.
Higher education as a driver of change to address the social and global challenges facing humanity in the 21st century has never been as important as it is today.
KAIST will raise the topic of higher education as a driver of social change, innovation, and entrepreneurship with the heads of global universities at its seventh international forum to be held on April 11-12, 2016 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seoul, the Republic of Korea.
The 2016 International Presidential Forum on Global Research Universities (IPFGRU) will bring over 120 presidents and vice presidents of 65 research universities and institutes from 36 nations together to discuss the theme of “Social Responsibilities of Higher Education and Strategic Global Partnership.”
Presidents Sung-Mo Kang of KAIST, Jacques Biot of École Polytechnique in France, and Peretz Lavie of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology will address the conference as plenary speakers.
President Kang will speak about KAIST’s initiatives to produce creative talents through student-centered education, entrepreneurship curricula, and the integration of humanities into cutting-edge research programs. His presentation, titled “The Fostering of Creative Talents and the Social Responsibility of Research Universities in the New Era,” introduces KAIST’s educational philosophy which can be represented as π. A broad range of understanding in basic disciplines (the horizontal line) is supported with one prong of in-depth knowledge in a chosen field and the other in entrepreneurial spirit.
KAIST graduates have demonstrated extraordinary leadership in research, academia, business, and public service. Nearly 25% of the research and development personnel at Samsung Electronics are KAIST Ph.D. holders. President Kang also describes KAIST’s latest endeavor to turn a university-led entrepreneurial activity into a stable business based on research outcomes and campus innovations. The K-School, a one-year master’s degree program on entrepreneurship and innovation, has just launched and is expecting to receive its first batch of students this fall. The K-School is envisioned to continue the university’s legacy as a major feeder for startups in Korea.
President Lavie will give a talk on “Fostering an Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Ecosystem in Israel,” in which he describes how the Technion-Israel Institute has become integral to the foundation of the nation’s I&E platform. Since its establishment in 1912, the university has become a key player in the growth of Israel’s industry, science, and technology while nurturing the majority of the nation’s top-notch researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Technion graduates have created more than 2,000 companies in Israel alone, generating 100,000 jobs and USD 30 billion through mergers and acquisitions.
President Biot will offer his insights into how the future of global research universities will be widely impacted by the emergence of disruptions triggered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In his speech entitled “How to Prepare Our Universities for the New Era of Industry 4.0,” he emphasizes that universities should take multi-disciplinary approaches to tackle societal challenges given the complexity of today’s problems ranging from climate change to energy crises, pandemic diseases, and poverty. He argues that universities should identify the needs of students in “Generation Z” who, from birth, have been heavily exposed to the Internet and digital technologies and, thus, universities should develop new educational systems (i.e., University 4.0.) to better prepare these students to cope with Industry 4.0.
The IPFGRU consists of presentations and discussions addressing the following sub-topics:
- Seeking a New Model of Research Universities in a New Era: This session will explore the role of research universities as both innovation drivers and growth engines in an age of robotics, globalization, and digitally-driven markets. In addition, speakers will discuss how to prepare universities for the Industry 4.0 era, and how multidisciplinary approaches and open innovations will play a large part in facilitating translational research and technology transfer.
- Shared Challenges and Responsibilities from a Global Perspective: Universities will share their strategies, policies, and practices to respond to critical issues facing local and global communities such as youth unemployment, the environment, energy, inequality, and entrepreneurship.
- Strategic Global Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Panelists will discuss how to build productive and sustainable partnerships that can generate synergies between education and research.
- Insights into Higher Education: Trends and Development: Participants will examine how universities can stay relevant in an increasingly competitive higher education sector and can assist students to better adapt to opportunities and challenges posed by the new industry of digital transformation and exponentially-growing technologies.
Sung-Hyon Myaeng, the Associate Vice President of the International Office at KAIST and a Co-chair of the 2016 IPFGRU said,
“The IPFGRU was established in 2008 to promote excellence and innovation in higher education with presidents of leading research universities and key policy-makers in the private and public sectors from across the world. Since then, it has served as one of the largest university gatherings in Asia, allowing participants to cooperate and share their expertise, ideas, and best practices taking place in academia, industry, and government.”
“This year’s meeting has recorded the largest number of universities participating, including 28 European schools, 20 Asian institutions, and 8 schools from the Americas, which I believe reflects a sense of urgency that global universities share. One way or another, we must adapt to the rapidly transforming educational and research environment encompassing higher learning,” added Myaeng.
For more information, go to http://forum.kaist.ac.kr.
2016.04.08 View 9946 -
KAIST Commencement 2016
KAIST hosted its 2016 commencement ceremony on February 19, 2016 at the Sports Complex on campus.
KAIST celebrated the event with five thousand participants including graduating students, faculty, guests, Vice Minister Nam-Ki Hong of Science, ICT and Future Planning of Korea, Chairman Jang-Moo Lee of KAIST's Board of Trustees, and President Jeong-Sik Ko of the KAIST Alumni Association.
President Patrick Aebischer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, and the former Speaker of the National Assembly of Korea Chang-Hee Kang received honorary doctorates in science and technology for their contributions to the advancement of science and engineering in education and research.
KAIST granted 570 doctoral degrees, 1,329 master’s degrees, and 867 bachelor degrees on this day.
Yoon-Bum Lee of the Chemistry Department graduated with honors; Woo-Young Jin of the Mathematical Sciences Department received the Chairman’s Award of the KAIST Board and Eun-Hee Yoo of the Biological Sciences Department for the KAIST Presidential Award. Min-Hyun Cho and Yoon-Seok Chang were recipients of the President’s Award of the KAIST Alumni Association and the President’s Award of the University Supporting Association, respectively.
President Steve Kang addressed the ceremony and congratulated the graduates, saying,
“Now, your task is to make significant contributions to your communities: be leaders in your fields and remain active members of society. Given your academic knowledge and vision for the future, I encourage you to dream big.”
2016.02.23 View 43025 -
KAIST Graduate Han Receives a 2016 PECASE Award
President Barack Obama of the United States (US) announced 105 recipients of the 2016 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) on February 18. Among the awardees was a graduate from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST.
Dr. Jin-Woo Han has worked as a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center since graduating from KAIST in 2010. This year, he is the only awardee who received a doctoral degree from a Korean university to become a recipient of the highest honor bestowed by the US government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
The awards ceremony will take place in early spring at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Han has been involved in the development of radiation tolerant semiconductor devices as well as radiation and gas sensors under Dr. Meyya Meyyappan, Chief Scientist of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames Research Center.
KAIST and the NASA Ames Research Center made a research collaboration agreement in 2008, under which KAIST has sent 12 post-doctoral fellows to the center to date.
The PECASE awards, established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the US President. Awardees are selected for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community services as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.
2016.02.23 View 10418 -
Workshop on Techniques in Prediction Analysis for the Industry
There has been growing interest in the value and the application of “big data” in recent years. To meet this interest, a workshop was held to discuss the possibility and the future of prediction analysis, which is the next big step in data mining after big data.
On February 25 in COEX, Seoul, the Department of Knowledge Service Engineering at KAIST held the 4th knowledge service workshop on “Techniques in Prediction Analysis for the Industry.”
Predication analysis is a technique that can predict the future based on the understanding of the past and the present through analyzing “big data.” If “big data” is fuel in figurative sense, the prediction analysis serves as the engine.
The Department seeks to help those companies interested in data mining by introducing fundamentals and some application examples to the executives of companies who are interested in implementation of the technique.
The lecture was delivered by six professors from the Department of Knowledge Service Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at KAIST.
Thomas Miller, the author of Modeling Techniques in Predictive Analytics, covered the contents of his book at the event. Professor Moon-Yong Yi, Chair of the Department of Knowledge Service Engineering, said, “This conference will be important to companies that are considering the implementation of the prediction analysis as well as to students who are interested in the field.”
2016.02.22 View 5788