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Mystery of Biological Plastic Synthesis Machinery Unveiled
Plastics and other polymers are used every day. These polymers are mostly made from fossil resources by refining petrochemicals. On the other hand, many microorganisms naturally synthesize polyesters known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) as distinct granules inside cells.
PHAs are a family of microbial polyesters that have attracted much attention as biodegradable and biocompatible plastics and elastomers that can substitute petrochemical counterparts. There have been numerous papers and patents on gene cloning and metabolic engineering of PHA biosynthetic machineries, biochemical studies, and production of PHAs; simple Google search with “polyhydroxyalkanoates” yielded returns of 223,000 document pages. PHAs have always been considered amazing examples of biological polymer synthesis. It is astounding to see PHAs of 500 kDa to sometimes as high as 10,000 kDa can be synthesized in vivo by PHA synthase, the key polymerizing enzyme in PHA biosynthesis. They have attracted great interest in determining the crystal structure of PHA synthase over the last 30 years, but unfortunately without success. Thus, the characteristics and molecular mechanisms of PHA synthase were under a dark veil.
In two papers published back-to-back in Biotechnology Journal online on November 30, 2016, a Korean research team led by Professor Kyung-Jin Kim at Kyungpook National University and Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) described the crystal structure of PHA synthase from Ralstonia eutropha, the best studied bacterium for PHA production, and reported the structural basis for the detailed molecular mechanisms of PHA biosynthesis. The crystal structure has been deposited to Protein Data Bank in February 2016. After deciphering the crystal structure of the catalytic domain of PHA synthase, in addition to other structural studies on whole enzyme and related proteins, the research team also performed experiments to elucidate the mechanisms of the enzyme reaction, validating detailed structures, enzyme engineering, and also N-terminal domain studies among others.
Through several biochemical studies based on crystal structure, the authors show that PHA synthase exists as a dimer and is divided into two distinct domains, the N-terminal domain (RePhaC1ND) and the C-terminal domain (RePhaC1CD). The RePhaC1CD catalyzes the polymerization reaction via a non-processive ping-pong mechanism using a Cys-His-Asp catalytic triad. The two catalytic sites of the RePhaC1CD dimer are positioned 33.4 Å apart, suggesting that the polymerization reaction occurs independently at each site. This study also presents the structure-based mechanisms for substrate specificities of various PHA synthases from different classes.
Professor Sang Yup Lee, who has worked on this topic for more than 20 years, said,
“The results and information presented in these two papers have long been awaited not only in the PHA community, but also metabolic engineering, bacteriology/microbiology, and in general biological sciences communities. The structural information on PHA synthase together with the recently deciphered reaction mechanisms will be valuable for understanding the detailed mechanisms of biosynthesizing this important energy/redox storage material, and also for the rational engineering of PHA synthases to produce designer bioplastics from various monomers more efficiently.”
Indeed, these two papers published in Biotechnology Journal finally reveal the 30-year mystery of machinery of biological polyester synthesis, and will serve as the essential compass in creating designer and more efficient bioplastic machineries.
References:
Jieun Kim, Yeo-Jin Kim, So Young Choi, Sang Yup Lee and Kyung-Jin Kim. “Crystal structure of Ralstonia eutropha polyhydroxyalkanoate synthase C-terminal domain and reaction mechanisms” Biotechnology Journal DOI: 10.1002/biot.201600648
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/biot.201600648/abstract
Yeo-Jin Kim, So Young Choi, Jieun Kim, Kyeong Sik Jin, Sang Yup Lee and Kyung-Jin Kim. “Structure and function of the N-terminal domain of Ralstonia eutropha polyhydroxyalkanoate synthase, and the proposed structure and mechanisms of the whole enzyme” Biotechnology Journal DOI: 10.1002/biot.201600649
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/biot.201600649/abstract
2016.12.02 View 11315 -
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 9163 -
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 7737 -
K-Glass 3 Offers Users a Keyboard to Type Text
KAIST researchers upgraded their smart glasses with a low-power multicore processor to employ stereo vision and deep-learning algorithms, making the user interface and experience more intuitive and convenient.
K-Glass, smart glasses reinforced with augmented reality (AR) that were first developed by KAIST in 2014, with the second version released in 2015, is back with an even stronger model. The latest version, which KAIST researchers are calling K-Glass 3, allows users to text a message or type in key words for Internet surfing by offering a virtual keyboard for text and even one for a piano.
Currently, most wearable head-mounted displays (HMDs) suffer from a lack of rich user interfaces, short battery lives, and heavy weight. Some HMDs, such as Google Glass, use a touch panel and voice commands as an interface, but they are considered merely an extension of smartphones and are not optimized for wearable smart glasses. Recently, gaze recognition was proposed for HMDs including K-Glass 2, but gaze cannot be realized as a natural user interface (UI) and experience (UX) due to its limited interactivity and lengthy gaze-calibration time, which can be up to several minutes.
As a solution, Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo and his team from the Electrical Engineering Department recently developed K-Glass 3 with a low-power natural UI and UX processor. This processor is composed of a pre-processing core to implement stereo vision, seven deep-learning cores to accelerate real-time scene recognition within 33 milliseconds, and one rendering engine for the display.
The stereo-vision camera, located on the front of K-Glass 3, works in a manner similar to three dimension (3D) sensing in human vision. The camera’s two lenses, displayed horizontally from one another just like depth perception produced by left and right eyes, take pictures of the same objects or scenes and combine these two different images to extract spatial depth information, which is necessary to reconstruct 3D environments. The camera’s vision algorithm has an energy efficiency of 20 milliwatts on average, allowing it to operate in the Glass more than 24 hours without interruption.
The research team adopted deep-learning-multi core technology dedicated for mobile devices. This technology has greatly improved the Glass’s recognition accuracy with images and speech, while shortening the time needed to process and analyze data. In addition, the Glass’s multi-core processor is advanced enough to become idle when it detects no motion from users. Instead, it executes complex deep-learning algorithms with a minimal power to achieve high performance.
Professor Yoo said, “We have succeeded in fabricating a low-power multi-core processer that consumes only 126 milliwatts of power with a high efficiency rate. It is essential to develop a smaller, lighter, and low-power processor if we want to incorporate the widespread use of smart glasses and wearable devices into everyday life. K-Glass 3’s more intuitive UI and convenient UX permit users to enjoy enhanced AR experiences such as a keyboard or a better, more responsive mouse.”
Along with the research team, UX Factory, a Korean UI and UX developer, participated in the K-Glass 3 project.
These research results entitled “A 126.1mW Real-Time Natural UI/UX Processor with Embedded Deep-Learning Core for Low-Power Smart Glasses” (lead author: Seong-Wook Park, a doctoral student in the Electrical Engineering Department, KAIST) were presented at the 2016 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that took place January 31-February 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/If_anx5NerQ
Figure 1: K-Glass 3
K-Glass 3 is equipped with a stereo camera, dual microphones, a WiFi module, and eight batteries to offer higher recognition accuracy and enhanced augmented reality experiences than previous models.
Figure 2: Architecture of the Low-Power Multi-Core Processor
K-Glass 3’s processor is designed to include several cores for pre-processing, deep-learning, and graphic rendering.
Figure 3: Virtual Text and Piano Keyboard
K-Glass 3 can detect hands and recognize their movements to provide users with such augmented reality applications as a virtual text or piano keyboard.
2016.02.26 View 14204 -
Professor Joonho Choe Appointed as the President of the KSMCB
Professor Joonho Choe of the Biological Sciences Department at KAIST has been elected the 25th president of Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology (KSMCB).
His presidency will last one year, beginning on January 1, 2016.
Established in 1989, the Society has served as the largest academic gathering in the field of life sciences, holding an international conference every fall. It has more than 12,400 fellows.
Professor Choe served as the vice president of KSMC as well as the editor of its journal, Molecules and Cells.
He said, “The 2016 International Conference of the KSMCB will take place on October 12-14, 2016 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Hall in Seoul. This year, we are preparing 20 symposiums and will invite four international renowned keynote speakers in the field including a Nobel Laureate. We hope many people, students and young researchers in particular, from academia and industry will join the conference.”
Professor Choe received his doctoral degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) after graduating from Seoul National University with his bachelor and master’s degrees.
2016.01.05 View 9808 -
Prof. Jae-Kyu Lee Campaigns on "Bright Internet" Worldwide
Professor Jae-Kyu Lee (pictured on the right) from the College of Business at KAIST is one step closer to fulfilling his dream of achieving the “Bright Internet,” a campaign that he first proposed as he became the president of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) in June 2015.
On December 12, 2015, Professor Lee signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at a convention center in Fort Worth, Texas, between the AIS and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)—a specialized agency of the United Nations that is responsible for issues related to information and communication technologies—on a collaborative research and development program to make the Internet safer for everyone.
The MOU pursues building a trusted international information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure by proposing telecommunication policies, developing international standards, and organizing interdisciplinary conferences.
The Bright Internet is an initiative to protect online users from cyber terrors, privacy breaches, and cyber-crimes. Further, it involves putting accountability to those who initiate or deliver cyber threats, thereby eliminating the possible source of Internet related crimes.
Following the MOU agreement, Prof. Lee delivered a speech on his campaign at the 2015 International Conference on Information Systems and received positive responses from the audience.
The Bright Internet campaign has been selected as visions of various ICT organizations worldwide including the Korea Society of Management Information System and the International Federation of Information Processing. KAIST and Tsinghua University in China adopted it as an academic topic for research and teaching.
Prof. Lee claimed that the Internet should be used in a manner based on the values of trust, ethics, and decorum. He further noted that it is important to build Internet environments that not only protect individuals from cyber threats or attacks, but also hold those who commit online crimes accountable for their actions.
2015.12.28 View 10877 -
KAIST's Top 10 Contributions to Korea and the World
Established in 1971, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) started off as a relatively modest graduate school in a few disciplines in science and technology, but has gradually expanded into a full-fledged research university over the years.
From the beginning, KAIST was intended to offer an elite science education, setting it apart from other universities in Korea. A majority of its graduates have contributed to the development of, what the world now praises, Korean industry and economy, and have led the Korean scientific community for several decades. The university has also advanced the frontiers of knowledge, conducting the lion’s share of the nation’s private research and development in basic and applied science, leading to innovations and technologies essential to the growth of today’s Korea.
As it establishes international benchmarks of success, KAIST has acquired a global reputation for delivering the highest level of science and engineering education, while performing cutting-edge research and serving as a crucial driver to generate new knowledge and innovation beneficial not only to Korea but also to the world. The university has consistently ranked in the top 100 research universities for over more than a decade, according to the world university rankings published by international ranking institutions for higher education, among others, Quacquarelli Symonds and the Times Higher Education.
KAIST will mark its 45th anniversary next year. It plans to celebrate the anniversary, and here are some of the reasons why:
KAIST’s Win at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) 2015
Team KAIST, consisted of 29 members (students and researchers) led by Professors Jun-Ho Oh of the Mechanical Engineering Department and In-So Kweon of the Electrical Engineering Department, won the international humanoid robotics competition hosted by the United States (US) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Upon completion of the first and second competitions, the finals were held on June 5-6, 2015, at the Fairplex in Pomona, California. DARPA hosted the event to spur the development of humanoid robots to assist rescue and relief efforts in dangerous environments such as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident in 2011. With 24 international teams participating in the finals from the US, Japan, Germany, China, Italy, and Korea, Team KAIST’s humanoid robot, DRC-HUBO, completed all eight tasks in 44 minutes and 28 seconds, six minutes earlier than the runner-up, and almost eleven minutes earlier than the third-place team, walking away with the grand prize of USD 2 million.
Hitting a Grand Slam to Win Major International Design Awards
Professor Sang-Min Bae of the Industrial Design Department achieved a grand slam in international design awards with his work HEARTea, an interactive tumbler, winning four major design competitions in the world: the iF Design Award, the International Design Excellence Awards, the Red Dot Design Award, and the Good Design Award. Released in 2010, HEARTea swept prizes from the four awards which were held during the period of the year 2010-2011. The tumbler displays the temperature of liquid contained inside in three degrees (cool, warm, and hot) by showing different colored lights on the surface of the tumbler based on the liquid temperature (see picture below). In 2015, Professor Bae and his research team won three awards from the 2015 Red Dot Design Award: the Best of the Best Award and two Red Dot Design Concept Awards. The team received the Best of the Best Award, the most prestigious award among the Red Dot Design awards, for Boxchool, a modular classroom built on shipping containers, which offers underprivileged children better opportunities for learning. With greater mobility, Boxchool can be easily installed in any setting, including remote areas where children do not have access to regular school facilities.
Glass Fabric Thermoelectric Generator, the Grand Prize Winner at the Netexplo Forum 2015
Professor Byung-Jin Cho of the Electrical Engineering Department received the grand prize at the Netexplo Forum 2015 held in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on February 4-5, 2015, at the UNESCO House in Paris. Established in 2007, the Netexplo Forum is an annual international conference hosted by the Netexplo Observatory, a non-profit organization sponsored by the French Senate and the French Ministry for the Digital Economy, which studies the impact of digital technology on society and business. Each year, the Netexplo Forum highlights major trends in digital technology and innovation worldwide and lists the top ten most promising technologies that it considers will greatly impact the world. Among the list for this year, Professor Cho’s glass fabric-based thermoelectric (TE) generator received the grand prize. Using a screen-printing technique, Professor Cho printed TE liquid materials onto a glass fabric to generate electricity through the thermoelectric effect, that is, by generating electricity from temperature difference. Since the glass fabric is light and flexible, this technology is expected to have a wide range of applications in wearable computers and devices.
Charging on the Go: Online Electric Vehicle System
KAIST’s Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) is a system that charges electric vehicles while stationary or driving, thus removing the need to stop for charges. Developed by Professor Dong-Ho Cho of the Electrical Engineering Department and his research team, OLEV receives power wirelessly through a new application called “Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance technology (SMFIR).” Electrical cables buried underneath roads create magnetic fields, and a receiving device installed underneath the electric vehicle collects the fields and converts them into electricity. Time, a US weekly magazine, listed OLEV as one of the 50 Greatest Inventions of the Year 2010 in its November 22nd issue. Since 2012, several OLEV buses have been operating daily to provide citizens with transportation in cities such as Yeosu, Gumi, and Sejong in Korea. In April 2015, Professor Cho signed a memorandum of understanding with the city government of Medellín, the second largest city in Colombia, to provide two OLEV buses for inner-city transportation services. The research team also developed OLEV for a high capacity transit system including trams and high-speed trains, successfully showcasing 60 kHz of power transferred wirelessly to trams and trains in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
Pioneer in the Development of Functional Mesoporous Materials and Zeolites
On September 25, 2014, Thomson Reuters announced the “2014 Citation Laureates,” a list of candidates considered likely to win the Nobel Prize in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and economics. Distinguished Professor Ryong Ryoo of the Department of Chemistry was named the 2014 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates in Chemistry in recognition of his significant contribution to the advancement of designing functional mesoporous materials. He is the first Korean scientist to make the list. Professor Ryoo has pioneered the field of functional mesoporous materials and zeolites which are widely used as catalysts and sorbents. In 1999, he developed a nanocasting method, and with the technique, was able to synthesize ordered mesoporous carbon materials, for the first time in the world. Today, ordered mesoporous carbon materials have widespread applications in many areas such as adsorbents, catalysts and supports, gas-storage hosts, and electrode materials. Since 2006, using zeolite frameworks, Professor Ryoo has led the development of new methods to synthesize mesoporous materials whose molecules are designed to have a hierarchical structure of microspores and mesopores. He has published 255 research papers in renowned academic journals including Nature and Science. In December 2011, Science highlighted his research as one of the top ten breakthroughs in the year of 2011 in an article entitled “Directing Zeolite Structures into Hierarchically Nanoporous Architectures.” Professor Ryoo received numerous awards and honors including the World’s Top 100 Chemists over the Past 11 Years (2000-2010) by UNESCO and IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), the Breck Award by International Zeolite Association, and the Ho-Am prize in Science.
The Launch of Korea’s First Satellites into Space
Founded in 1989, the Satellite Technology Research Center (SaTReC) at KAIST has led the development of a series of Korean-made satellites over the past 26 years. The first satellite, the Korea Institute of Technology Satellite-1 (KITSAT-1), was launched on August 11, 1992, at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. KITSAT-1 was designed in collaboration with a British university, the University of Surrey in Guildford. The success of KITSAT-1 sparked nation-wide interest in the development of space technology and led to the subsequent launches of 18 satellites and three carrier rockets such as KITSAT-2 and 3 (meteorological satellites); KSR-1, 2, and 3 (carrier rockets); KOREASAT-1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (communication satellites); KOMPSAT-1, 2, 3, and 5 (multipurpose satellites); STSAT-1, 2C, and 3 (scientific satellites); and COMS-1 (navigation satellite). The latest scientific satellite, STSAT-3, and an earth observation satellite, KOMPSAT-3A, were launched in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The STSAT-2C, exclusively developed by SaTReC, was launched in January 2013 and transmitted data on the observation of space environments to the ground station located on KAIST’s campus for 14 months. The STSAT-2C was the first satellite developed solely with Korean technology. On June 30, 2009, the Korean government also established a spaceport in South Jeolla’s Goheung County, the Naro Space Center to launch satellites and spacecraft.
KAIST: Major Feeder for Startups in Korea
As seen in its core values of promoting creativity and a challenging spirit, KAIST has always encouraged startups and technology transfers led by university members including students and faculty. In the past four years from 2011 to 2014, students and faculty members have created 104 startups based on technology innovation and research outcomes, with an average of 26 new companies started per year. This is the highest number of university-led startups in Korea. As of 2013, KAIST graduates founded a total of 1,245 companies, generating approximately USD 1.5 billion sales and creating 34,000 jobs. KAIST has provided a variety of programs and facilities to build a startup-friendly campus culture and support student- and faculty-led entrepreneurship, for example, the End-Run Policy, Startup KAIST Studio, the Institute of Startup and Entrepreneurship, and the Startup Incubation Center. In particular, KAIST Idea Factory, a startup laboratory established last year, where students play around with ideas by conducting new experiments or building test products, created 3-D printers this year, producing 20 prototypes and filing four pending patents. Recently, KAIST has registered four proprietary standard patents with MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)-LA’s HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) Patent Portfolio License, which provides access to essential patent rights for the HEVC digital video coding standard. KAIST expects to acquire more than 50 proprietary standard patents within two years, generating close to UDS 1 million in income.
The Number of KAIST Doctoral Graduates Reaches Over 10,000
Since the establishment of KAIST forty-four years ago, more than ten thousand alumni have received their doctorates. The university’s 2015 Commencement ceremony took place on February 13, 2015, at the Sports Complex on campus, awarding Dr. Sun-Mi Cho of the Department of Biological Sciences the 10,000th doctoral degree. She also received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from KAIST. In 1978, KAIST had only two doctoral graduates, but since 1987, there have been more than one hundred graduates each year, two hundred since 1994, and four hundred since 2000. In 2015 alone, 522 doctoral students graduated. One of the first doctoral graduates, Dr. Dong-Yol Yang (Class of 1978 in the Mechanical Engineering Department) became a professor in the same department of KAIST. In the early 1970s, many Koreans preferred to go abroad for Ph.D. degrees, but this changed when KAIST began to select candidates for master’s degrees in 1973, and doctoral degrees in 1975. Talented Korean students began to work in KAIST laboratories, and its graduates were known for their knowledge and skills. Now, KAIST receives many applications from talented foreign students as well. At the 2015 Commencement, KAIST conferred 522 Doctoral, 1,241 Master’s, and 915 Bachelor of Science degrees. Since its inception in 1971, KAIST has granted 10,403 doctoral degrees, 26,402 master’s degrees, and 51,412 bachelor’s degrees.
Fostering a New Learning Model: The Education 3.0 Program
KAIST undertook a bold initiative to improve its education system that would address more effectively the needs of today’s higher education to foster talents with creative and critical thinking skills. It introduced a new pedagogical model, the Education 3.0 program, to the campus in the spring of 2012, which was then an extremely rare movement taken by universities around the world. The Education 3.0 program incorporates flipped learning and smart classrooms. This means there are no formal lectures while in-class time is devoted to problem solving, exercises, projects, or discussions. The program provided students with greater opportunity to control their learning and interact more with professors and peers. Originally started with three general courses in physics, chemistry, and biology, the Education 3.0 is now offered in 50-60 courses per semester. In 2013 alone, approximately 2,000 KAIST students took the Education 3.0 courses. The university has also developed and implemented an e-Learning system to provide online courses, as well as participated in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Partnering with Coursera since 2013, KAIST has offered three MOOCs in engineering and business management to the global community. Leading the efforts to create Korean MOOCs (K-MOOCs), KAIST agreed with other Korean universities in October 2015 to create online courses in basic subjects of physics, chemistry, mathematics, life science, mechanical engineering, and material science. K-MOOCs will be available in the summer of 2016.
Holistic Admissions for Undergraduates
Korean universities traditionally put an emphasis on students’ empirical data such as a GPA or the national College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) when reviewing applicants for the undergraduate admission. This practice, however, has posed serious challenges, most notably with CSAT’s requirement that the test takes place only once a year. It was simply impossible and unfair to assess students’ capability from the scores of a high-pressure, high-stakes standardized test. In 2009, KAIST changed its undergraduate admission process to consider the whole applicant’s profile, not just looking for students with good grades, but interesting and promising students who would contribute to the campus community in different and diverse ways. KAIST’s admissions officers have taken into account applicants’ interests, passions, special talents, and personality through their personal essays, recommendation letters, extracurricular activities, and intensive interviews. Prior to KAIST’s new policy, no other university in the nation had ever incorporated such a holistic approach to review student applications. Today, most Korean universities have adopted this admission policy. In addition, for the first time in Korea, KAIST offered all freshmen the option to defer the decision on majors, thereby allowing them to explore their interests more freely. Even after declaring majors as sophomores and higher classes, KAIST students can easily change their majors, and undergraduate students can actually create and lead their own research projects. As such, KAIST has continued to offer innovations to provide students with a quality education to foster their potential.
2015.11.27 View 19870 -
Professor Keon-Jae Lee Lectures at IEDM and ISSCC Forums
Professor Keon-Jae Lee of KAIST’s Materials Science and Engineering Department delivered a speech at the 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held on December 7-9, 2015 in Washington, D.C.
He will also present a speech at the 2016 International Solid-State Circuits Conference scheduled on January 31-February 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California.
Both professional gatherings are considered the world’s most renowned forums in electronic devices and semiconductor technology. It is rare for a Korean researcher to be invited to speak at these global conferences.
Professor Lee was recognized for his research on flexible NAND chips. The Korea Times, an English language daily newspaper in Korea, reported on his participation in the forums and his recent work. An excerpt of the article follows below:
“KAIST Professor to Lecture at Renowned Tech Forums”
By Lee Min-hyung, The Korea Times, November 26, 2015
Recently he has focused on delivering technologies for producing flexible materials that can be applied to everyday life. The flexible NAND flash memory chips are expected to be widely used for developing flexible handsets. His latest research also includes flexible light-emitting diodes (LED) for implantable biomedical applications.
Lee is currently running a special laboratory focused on developing new flexible nano-materials. The research group is working to develop what it calls “self-powered flexible electronic systems” using nanomaterials and electronic technology.
Lee’s achievement with flexible NAND chips was published in the October edition of Nano Letters, the renowned U.S.-based scientific journal.
He said that flexible memory chips will be used to develop wearable computers that can be installed anywhere.
2015.11.26 View 13378 -
KAIST Develops New Technique for Chiral Activity in Molecules
Professor Hyunwoo Kim of the Chemistry Department and his research team have developed a technique that can easily analyze the optical activity of charged compounds by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The research finding entitled “H NMR Chiral Analysis of Charged Molecules via Ion Pairing with Aluminum Complexes” was published online in the October 19th issue of The Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The technique relies on observation of the behavior of optical isomers. Molecules with the same composition that are mirror images of each other are optical isomers. For example, the building blocks of all living organisms, amino acids, are a single optical isomer. In our bodies, optical isomers bring different physiological changes due to their distinct optical activities. Therefore, controlling and analyzing the optical activities are critical when developing a new drug.
High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is the de facto standard of analyzing the optical activity of a compound. However, HPLC is very expensive that many laboratories can’t afford to have. In addition, with the machine, one analysis may take 30 minutes to one hour to complete. It lacks in signal sensitivity and chemical decomposition, and the application is limited to nonpolar compounds.
Usually adopted in analyzing the structure of a chemical compound, NMR spectroscopy requires only one to five minutes per single analysis. Since it is essential for analyzing the molecular structure, many chemistry labs have NMR equipment. However, until this technique was invented, no other research team had reported an effective way of using the NMR spectroscopy to decompose the signal of chiral activity of a compound.
The research team uses negatively-charged metal compounds in NMR spectroscopy. The technique employs negatively-charged metal compounds which bond ionically to positively- and negatively-charged optical compounds. As a result, the NMR spectroscopy can distinguish the signal from chiral activity. Not only can it analyze various chemicals without structural constraints, but it can also be used for both nonpolar and polar solvents.
As many compounds for new drugs have functional groups, which can be charged, this analysis method can be directly employed in the development process of drugs. Professor Kim said, “A revolutionary analysis method has been developed using simple chemical principles. I hope that our method will be applied to the development of new medicine.”
This research was sponsored by the Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions at the Institute for Basic Science and the Supercomputing Research Center of KAIST.
Picture 1: Separations of NMR Signals of Chemicals due to Interaction with Metal Compounds
Picture 2: Separations of NMR Signals in Different Chemicals
2015.11.20 View 12585 -
Professors Sukbok Chang and Jang-Wook Choi Receive the 2015 Knowledge Award from the Korean Government
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MISP) of the Republic of Korea announced the 2015 Knowledge Awards on October 20, 2015. Two KAIST professors received the award.
Established in 2009, the awards are presented to Korean scientists whose publications have contributed to the international science community. Specifically, the MISP used the two biggest science databases, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus, to identify ten highly cited papers ranked in the top 1% by total citations in the past ten years.
Professor Sukbok Chang of Chemistry (left in the picture below) is a global authority in the field of catalytic hydrocarbon functionalization. His paper entitled “Palladium-catalyzed C-H Functionalization of Pyridine N-Oxides: Highly Selective Alkenylation and Direct Arylation with Unactivated Arenes,” which was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2008, was once selected by Thomson Reuters as one of the “Most Influential Research Papers of the Month.” In 2011, the American Chemical Society included his paper in the list of the top 20 research papers that were most frequently cited in the last three years.
Professor Jang-Wook Choi of the Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water, and Sustainability) has been known for his leading research in rechargeable battery, supercapacitor, and materials chemistry. In particular, his work on secondary fuel cells attracted significant attention from academia and industry in Korea. Professor Choi developed a super-thin flexible lithium-ion battery this year, thinner than a credit card, which lasts longer than the existing batteries and with greater performance. He also developed new electrode materials for next-generation sodium-ion and magnesium secondary fuel cells.
Professor Sukbok Chang (left) and Professor Jang-Wook Choi (right)
2015.10.23 View 13942 -
Professor Sang-Min Bae receives the 2015 IDEA Awards
Professor Sang-min Bae of the Industrial Design Department at KAIST garnered one silver and two bronze awards from the 2015 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Along with iF Design Award and Red Dot Design Awards, the IDEA is regarded as one of the world’s most respected recognition in the field of design.
Trash to Bin (T2B), a silver winner in the category of Social Impact Design, is a trash bin made of 1.87 lb (0.85 kg) of discarded papers. Using one-hundred percent recycled paper pulp, each T2B costs under $5 for production. The bin can be fully waterproofed for at least six hours. While satisfying with the industry safety standards, this environmentally-friendly bin can be produced on a large scale using litter energy, but offering the exact same benefit of a general garbage can.
Roll-Di, one of the two bronze winners, is a direction indicator that tells which string of screen curtains should be pulled to make the curtain go up or down. As shown in the picture below, Roll-Di can be installed at the bottom of the string, and the “up and down” arrows show which side of the string needs to be pulled to achieve the desired position of the curtain. This simple, yet handy solution to the problem that people frequently make the mistake of pulling the wrong string provides users with greater convenience.
The other bronze winner is Printing Solar-cell, an organic cartridge module that prints solar-cells using a domestic, ink-jet printer. With Printing Solar-cell, users can design their own cell patterns and charge their electronics anywhere holding the printed solar-cell on a copy paper.
Professor Bae said, “I’ve always tried to design something that is useful for people in need. I consider the IDEA awards an encouragement to keep up with my work toward that goal.”
Trash to Bin
Roll-Di
Printing Solar-cell
2015.09.30 View 9522 -
Professor Woontack Woo Demonstrates an Optical Platform Technology for Augmented Reality at Smart Cloud Show
Professor Woontack Woo of the Graduate School of Culture Technology at KAIST participated in the Smart Cloud Show, a technology exhibition, hosted by the university’s Augmented Human Research Center and presented the latest development of his research, an optical platform system for augmented reality.
This event took place on September 16-17, 2015 at Grand Seoul Nine Tree Convention Center in Seoul.
At the event, Professor Woo introduced a smart glass with an embedded augmented reality system, which permits remote collaboration between an avatar and the user’s hand.
The previous remote collaboration was difficult for ordinary users to employ because of its two-dimensional screen and complicated virtual reality system.
However, with the new technology, the camera attached to artificial reality (AR) glasses recognizes the user’s hand and tracks it down to collaborate. The avatar in the virtual space and the user’s hand interact in real space and time.
The key to this technology is the stable, real-time hand-tracking technique that allows the detection of the hand’s locations and the recognition of finger movements even in situations of self-occlusion.
Through this method, a user can touch and manipulate augmented contents as if they were real-life objects, thereby collaborating remotely with another user who is physically distant by linking his or her movements with an avatar.
If this technology is adopted widely, it may bring some economic benefits such as increased productivity due to lower costs for mobility and reduction in social overhead costs from the decrease in the need of traveling long distance.
Professor Woo said, “This technology will provide us with a greater opportunity for collaboration, not necessarily restricted to physical travelling, which can be widely used in the fields of medicine, education, entertainment, and tourism.”
Professor Woo plans to present his research results on hand-movement tracking and detection at the 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2015), to be held on October 28-30, 2015, at Kintex in Goyang, Korea.
He will also present a research paper on remote collaboration at the ICAT-EGVE 2015 conference, the merger of the 25th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (ICAT 2015) and the 20th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (EGVE 2015), which will take place on October 28-30, 2015 at the Kyoto International Community House, Kyoto, Japan.
2015.09.16 View 10565