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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 14862 -
KAIST Business School Opens Homepage !!!!
KAIST Business School, founded in September, 2006 to efficiently manage the Graduate School of Management, founded in 1996, the Graduate School of Finance and the Graduate School of Information & Media Management, both founded in March 2006, now opens its homepage to provide more information on the school.
Click here to go to the homepage
2007.07.02 View 13242 -
Emeritus Professor Lee Dies
Jeong-Oh Lee, Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering, died of his chronic disease on June 15, 2007 at his age of 76.
The late Lee began his lecturing career at Mechanical Engineering Department in 1973 and had made considerable devotions to the education and development of mechanical engineering for 24 years. As the former Minister of Science and Technology, former President of Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and former President of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, he also has made significant contributions to the development of Korean science and technology.
Particularly, he played key roles in vitalizing Daeduk Research Complex (DRC) by planning and executing the movement of government-funded institutes despite the inactive research atmosphere in the early 1980s. He also set up the Extended Council for Technology Promotion, consisting of many distinguished persons from diverse fields under the supervision of the President, to make significant contributions to the promotion and spread of technology innovation among governmental and civil enterprises. He received Cheongjo Geunjeong Medal in 1985 and never stopped his devotion to the education of young students even after his retirement in 1997.
<Funeral Notice>- Date: Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 7 am.- Place: Eulji University Hospital, Daejeon- Graveyard: Cheonan graveyard- Bereaved family Wife Ok-Hyang Kang Son Jong-Sun Lee, Professor of Handong University Han-Sun Lee, LG Chemicals Daughter Myung-Ae Lee Son-in-law Young-Soo Lee, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology- Contact Point: C.P. 019.480.2451 (Han-Sun Lee)
2007.06.18 View 14453 -
KAIST Graduate Selected As Winner of IEEE Outstanding Young Engineer Award
- First Korean winner of IEEE Outstanding Young Engineer Award
Dr. Myung-Jin Rhim, Bachelor, Master, and Ph.D of KAIST, has been selected to receive 2007 Outstanding Young Engineer Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology (CPMT) Society. Dr. Rhim will be the first Korean winner of the award.
Dr. Rhim received his Ph.D of Materials Science & Engineering at KAIST in 2001 and has made outstanding research outputs, such as 28 papers at international journals covered by Science Citation Index (SCI) and 12 international patents. He has been also listed in Marquis Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who of Emerging Leaders, Who’s Who in Asia, and Outstanding Intellectual of the 21st Century, 21st Century Award for Achievement published by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England.
IEEE CPMT Society has yearly awarded the Outstanding Young Engineer Award to a scientist or engineer of electronic components, packaging, and manufacturing technology prior to his or her 35th birthday in recognition of his or her research achievements. Dr. Rhim is now in his postdoctoral program at Georgia Institute of Technology in USA.
2007.06.14 View 15259 -
KAIST Students Wins Gold Prize at Technical Idea Contest
KAIST Students Wins Gold Prize at Technical Idea Contest
- Receive the gold prize at the 3rd High-Tech Daejeon Technical Idea Contest for Company Establishment- For the development of a new system to convert complex web page addresses to short and meaningful addresses
Sang-Hoon Kim, Song-Hwa Chae and Dong-Hun Lee of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering won the gold prize at the prospective company establishment part in the 3rd High-Tech Daejeon Technical Idea Contest for Company Establishment on May 21 for their valuable development of ‘Web Page Address Clipping System’.
So far, simplified web page addresses include special characters, which make the addresses long and complex. That is, the current address simplification service combines meaningless random words and numerals to create addresses when web page addresses are entered. In this case, the addresses are not easy to share with others and reuse several times since they are difficult to memorize.
However, the ‘Web Page Address Clipping System’ shortens meaningless long addresses. In addition, the improved address simplification service will provide user’s own addresses, and statistics and ranking to clipping addresses frequently used.
Based on this technology, Kim and Chae are now preparing to open a company called ‘URLClip’ under the auspice of Professor Tae-Yong Yang and Researcher In-Soo Kim, KAIST Entrepreneurship Center. They are also expanding their service areas onto clipping library for individual users, host name services for enterprises, etc. and developing tool bar, RSS service (RSS is an acronym of RDF (or Rich) Site Summary. It refers to a service that automatically and easily provides frequently updated contents such as news and blogs to users), etc. to improve users’ conveniences.
URLClip (http://www.urlclip.net) is a next generation portal site, which is expected to provide a variety of individualized services based on Web Page Address Clipping Service and to be used by many enterprises as well as individual users who wish to enhance their access to useful contents.
“Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Professor Sun-Won Park has offered lots of helps and supports, so I could decide to commercialize the developed technologies. The application of this technology to real life will allow further comfortable uses of internet to users,” Kim said.
Narae Team received the best prize last April at the 2nd Pre-Star Venture Company-Opening Contest hosted by KAIST and Hanbat Univeristy, and the technology is pending a patent application.
Inquiry:Sang-Hoon Kim, Dep. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, H.P. 010-4754-9947Song-Hwa Chae, Dep. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, H.P. 010-7223-9947Home page: http://www.urlclip.netEmail: urlclip@urlclip.net
2007.06.05 View 14680 -
KAIST Graduate School of Information Media Management Opens Blog for Web2.0 Lectures
KAIST Graduate School of Information Media Management Opens Blog for Web2.0 Lectures
- http://webtwo.kaist.ac.kr
The Graduate School of Media Information Management of KAIST (President Nam Pyo Suh) has opened a blog to share the contents of and hear various opinions on Web2.0 Lecture programs, established this semester.
Web2.0 Lecture refers to a program to deliver and educate a variety of ongoing projects and market responses, along with scholarly and theoretical accesses in a real-time basis. The lectures will be made by invited experts in the fields of web and mobile, which are yet to be established academically, but have created huge markets. Lectures on recent hot issues, such as the relevant technologies, trends, cultures, policies, and markets of Web2.0, will be firstly made.
The blog provides highlight moving pictures of the lectures and comments by professors and assistants, and is expected to deliver high quality contents to faculty and students interested in Web2.0. In addition, professors and assistants will share opinions online with lecture takers.
Professors in charge: Prof. Sunghee Kim, Prof. Dongwan Cha, Prof. Choonghee Ryu, Prof. Jaesun HanAssistants in charge: Jinwoo Park, Daejin Chung, Kyungeun Sung.
Contents:1. Trens & Internet: Market and Technology① Web2.0 overview (Sangoo Cho, Managing Director of KTH)② Collective Intelligence (PRAK, President of Mar.gar.in)③ UCC (Jangho Kim, Manger, KBSi)④ Blog (Jeongseok Noh, President of T&C)⑤ Copyright and CCL (Jongsoo Yoon, Judge of CCK)⑥ Long-tail (Hyogon Chang, President of Innomove)⑦ Search 2.0 (Byungkook Chun, President of Searching Engine Mast)
2. Web2.0 and Beyond① Web2.0 & Convergence (Kyungjeon Lee, Professor of Kyunghee University)② Web2.0 & business (Sooman Park, President of Double Track)③ Social Computing (Sangki Han, President of Opinity AP)④ Web2.0 & Media (Yongseok Hwang, Professor of Kunkook University)⑤ Attention Economy (Taweoo Ki, Taewoo’s log)⑥ Mobile Web2.0 (Jonghong Chun, Senior researcher of ETRI)
2007.05.14 View 12327 -
Research Outputs over Carbon Nanotube by Prof. Choi Selected as Research Highlight by ACS
Research Outputs over Carbon Nanotube by Prof. Choi Selected as Research Highlight by ACS
Research Outputs over Carbon Nanotube by Prof. Choi Selected as Research Highlight by ACS
A research team headed by Seong-Min Choi, a professor of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, KAIST, has developed technologies to stably disperse carbon nanotube particles in aqueous solutions and organic solvents, essential for industrial applications of carbon nanotube, and discovered the dispersion characteristics of carbon nanotube. The research outputs have been published by ‘Advanced materials’ (19, 929, 2007), the most distinguished journal in Material Science field, and introduced as Research Highlight at the May 7th edition of ‘Heart Cut’ by the American Chemical Society (ACS).
A number of processes for industrial applications of carbon nanotube require the dispersion of carbon nanotube in aqueous solutions or organic solvents, and thus far, surfactant particles or DNAs have been used to disperse carbon nanotube particles. However, they have shortcomings of easy destruction of dispersion. In order to overcome such shortcomings, Prof. Choi’s team produced carbon nanotube particle-dispersed aqueous solutions by using surfactant particles and then polymerized surfactant particles absorbed to the surfaces of carbon nanotube in situ to develop carbon nanotube with hydrophile and safe surfaces. The functional carbon nanotube so obtained shows features of easy dispersion in aqueous solutions and organic solvents even after being processed, such as freeze drying, therefore, is expected to significantly contribute to the development of application technologies of carbon nanotubes. Tae-Hwan Kim and Chang-Woo Doh, both doctoral students, played key roles in the researches carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) as a nuclear power R&D project, and the relevant technologies were filed for patent applications.
Figures: Carbon nanotube before polymerization (left), carbon nanotube polymerized with surfactant particles (right)
2007.05.14 View 13107 -
KAIST to Publish Newsletter - 'KAISTAR'
KAIST to Publish Newsletter - ‘KAISTAR’
First edition on May 7To be issued every two weeks
KAIST (President Nam Pyo Suh) will be publishing the first edition of a newsletter targeting high school students on May 7. The newsletter is named ‘KAISTAR’, combination of ‘KAIST’ and ‘STAR’, meaning any KAIST students can be a world-class star in scientific circles. The newsletter will be issued every two weeks, beginning May 7.
KAISTAR is designed to convey a variety of happenings in KAIST to prospective students, thereby letting them know the excellences of KAIST and consequently attracting further talented students to the school. The newsletter will cover introduction of departments and student clubs, stories about graduates, and various events. KAIST is expecting the newsletter will play key roles in advertising the school to high school students. “The publication of KAISTAR is a brand-new challenge that informs the authentic aspects of KAIST to attract talented young boys and girls. I’m sure the authentic aspects of KAIST conveyed by KAISTAR will make prospective students and their parents ensure the excellences of KAIST,” said President Suh, giving his congratulatory remark to the publication. Free subscriptions are available and the newsletter can be seen on the official web site of the Admissions Team, http://admission.kaist.ac.kr.
2007.05.08 View 12436
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Professor Yang Named Recipient of Dupont Science & Technology Award
Professor Yang Named Recipient of Dupont Science & Technology Award
- Named as the recipient of Dupont Science & Technology Award of 2007- In recognition of his development of optical?bio-functional photonic crystal structures through Self-assembly of nanoparticles
Seung-Man Yang, a professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering of KAIST (President Nam Pyo Suh) and the president of the National Creative Research Initiatives Center for Photon and Fluid Integrated Circuit by the Ministry of Science and Technology, has been named as the recipient of Dupont Science & Technology Award.
Dupont Korea, associate of Dupont, a world-class science firm, has established and conferred ‘Dupont Science & Technology Award’ since 2002 to promote basic sciences and industrial development of Korea. Dupont Science & Technology Awards are awarded to scientists of universities or state-run institutes who have made outstanding R&D achievements in the fields of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Material Science and Material Engineering within five years. Dupont Korea announced on May 2, 2007 that Professor Yang is the recipient of the award this year, following the strict examination by the Koran Academy of Science and Technology (KAST).
The reason for the award is Professor Yang’s development of prototype optical?bio-functional photonic crystal structures that can process a huge amount of data, resulting from a study that has discovered the principle of Self-assembly where multifunctional nanoparticles are manufactured and assembled for themselves.
Professor Yang’s recent research result about photon structures and nano patterns was published by Nature (February 2, 2006 edition); posted on Heart-Cut, the portal site of the American Chemistry Society (ACS), as highlight paper two times (November 4, 2002 and May 1, 2006); and introduced at Research/Researcher of MRS Bulletin by the U.S. Material Research Society (MRS) as main paper in December 2003. Professor Yang is very famous in Korea and abroad for the excellences of his research achievements and has made request seminars at Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, Caltech, University of California, etc. He is also invited speaker and session organizer of the MRS and the SPIE.
2007.05.08 View 17078 -
A doctorate of Mechanical Engineering Named Recipient of Best Student Paper Award at International Society
Seung-Min Ryu, a doctorate of Mechanical Engineering under the supervision of Professor Dong-Yul Yang, has been named as a recipient of the best student paper award of the Society for Information Display (SID).
The title of the paper is ‘the study on the fabrication of super-high resolution cathode separators by X-ray lithography processes’. He proposed at this paper the fabrication of 12 micron-thick cathode separators, which can fabricate further delicate separators than the current 50 micron-thick commercial PDP separators, thereby significantly improving the resolution of PDPs in the future.
Ryu will make an oral presentation on this paper and win the award at the SID conference, which will take place in the U.S. for six days from May 20.
2007.04.23 View 14278 -
Prof. Bien Named IFSA Fuzzy Fellow
Prof. Bien Named IFSA Fuzzy Fellow
Zeungnam Bien, a professor of Electrical Engineering, has been named a Fuzzy Fellow of the International Fuzzy Systems Association (IFSA).
IFSA Fuzzy Fellows are named by the Fuzzy Fellows Committee based on the degree of technical contributions to the fuzzy set and its relevant fields and the degree of contribution for the establishment of fundaments in the field of advanced applied technologies development and fuzzy fields. IFSA has named total 36 fellows since its first one at the world congress in Prague in 1997.
Professor Bien has worked as the chairman of the IFSA and will be officially named a Fuzzy Fellowship at the IFSA World Congress at Cancun, Mexico in June.
2007.04.19 View 13054 -
KNS" International Journal Registered as SCIE
KNS" International Journal Registered as SCIE
International journal ‘Nuclear Engineering and Technology’, published by the Korean Nuclear Society (KNS, President Si-Hwan Kim) under the supervision of Poong Hyun Seong, a professor of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering of KAIST, has been made a member of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) administrated by Thomson Scientific.
Thomson Scientific has notified such decision on April 14 and revealed the actual thesis title index will officially be notified within this year.
2007.04.19 View 12482