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Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science Visits KAIST
Sofie Carsten Nielsen, the Minister for Higher Education and Science of Denmark, accompanied by her delegation, visited KAIST on January 21, 2015 to study outstanding cases of creative economy and to discuss methods of cooperation.
Her delegation included other distinguished members including Thomas Lehmann, the Danish ambassador to Korea, Peter Olesen, Chairman of Innovation Foundation Denmark Governing Board, and Martin Bendsøe, Senior Vice President and Dean of Technical University of Denmark.
After attending the "Electronic Communication Double Degree Agreement" signing ceremony between KAIST’s Department of Electrical Engineering and the Technical University of Denmark, Minister Nielsen visited KAIST’s Institute of Entrepreneurship to observe bilateral industry-university collaborations between KAIST and Denmark and discussed future development plans.
Also, the Grundfos Student Innovation Camp, sponsored by Grundfos, the world's largest pump manufacturer based in Denmark, took place at KAIST from October 26-31, 2014 where Grundfos professionals as well as students from Seoul National University, KAIST, and Technical University of Denmark (DTU) exchanged ideas and opinions on energy efficiency.
KAIST is currently conducting 19 collaborative projects including seven joint researches and seven joint degrees with DTU.
Minister Sofie Carsten Nielsen stands fifth from the left in the front row in the first picture below.
2015.01.27 View 8497 -
KAIST Announces the Recipients of Distinguished Alumni Awards
The KAIST Alumni Association (KAA) announced four “Proud KAIST Alumni” awards recipients for the year 2014: Sung-Wook Park, the Chief Executive Officer and President of SK Hynix; Seung Ho Shin, the President of Kangwon National University; Kew-Ho Lee, the President of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology; and Mun-Kee Choi, the former Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning of the Republic of Korea. The award ceremony took place during the 2015 KAA’s New Year's ceremony on January 17, 2015 at the Palace Hotel in Seoul.
Sung-Wook Park (M.S. ’82 and Ph.D. ’88, Department of Materials Science and Engineering), the Chief Executive Officer and President of SK Hynix, has worked as an expert in the field of memory semi-conductors for the past 30 years. He developed innovative technology and improved production efficiency, enabling the Korean semi-conductor industry to become a global leader.
Seung Ho Shin (M.S. ’79 and Ph.D. ’87, Department of Physics), the President of Kangwon National University (KNU), worked in the field of optical information processing, producing excellent research achievements and teaching the next generation of scientists. As the president of KNU, he has set an exemplary leadership in higher education.
Kew-Ho Lee (M.S. ’75, Department of Chemistry), the President of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, pioneered the field of separation film production which contributed greatly to Korean technological developments. He led several domestic and international societies to facilitate dynamic exchanges between industry and academia and with the international community.
Mun-Kee Choi (M.S. ’76, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering), the former Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the Republic of Korea, is a great contributor to the information and communications technology in Korea, working as a leader in the field of broadband integrated service digital network. He is also an educator for gifted students in science and technology, and a manager of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.
The Alumni Association established the “Proud KAIST Alumni Awards” in 1992 to recognize its alumni’s outstanding contributions to Korea and KAIST.
Pictured from left to right, Sung-Wook Park (the Chief Executive Officer and President of SK Hynix), Seung Ho Shin (the President of Kangwon National University), Kew-Ho Lee (the President of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology), and Mun-Kee Choi (the former Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning)
2015.01.19 View 12732 -
Hierarchically-Porous Polymers with Fast Absorption
KAIST's Professor Myungeun Seo and his research team from the Graduate School of Nanoscience and Technology has developed a method to form micropores of less than 2 nanometers within porous polymers where 10 nanometers long mesopores connect like a net. The advantage of the porous polymers is fast absorption of molecules.
Porous polymers with micropores of less than 2 nanometers, like a zeolite, have a large surface area. They are used as a means to store hydrogen-based molecules or as a catalytic support that can be used as a surface to convert a material into a desired form. However, because the size of the pores in its path was too small for the molecules, it took a long time to spread into the pores and reach the surface.
To reach the surface efficiently, a lung cell or the vein of a leaf has a structure wherein the pores are subdivided into different sizes so that the molecule can spread throughout the organ. A technology that can create not only micropores but also bigger pores was necessary in order to create such structure.
The research team solved the issue by implementing a "self-assembly" of block polymers to easily form a net-like nanostructure from mesopores of 10 nanometers.
The team created hierarchically-porous polymers consisting of two different types of pores by using a hypercrosslinking reaction along with the "self-assembly" method. The reaction creates micropores within the chain after the polymer chain is confined by a chemical bond.
This porous polymer has micropores that are smaller than 2 nanometers on the walls of mesopores while 10 nanometers long mesopores forming 3-dimensional net structures. Because of the "self-assembly" method, the size of mesopores can be adjusted within the range of 6 to 15 nanometers.
This is the first case where a porous polymer has both well-defined mesopores and micropores. The research team verified the effect of hierarchically-porous structures on absorption of molecules by confirming that the porous polymer had faster absorption speeds than a polymer consisting only of micropores.
Professor Seo said, “The study has found a simple way to create different sizes of pores within a polymer.” He expected that the hierarchically-porous polymers can be used as a catalytic support in which fast diffusion of molecules is essential, or for molecule collection.
The research was sponsored by National Research Foundation of Korea and published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Figure 1 – Net-like Structure of Hierarchically-Porous Polymers with Mesopores and Micropores on the walls of Mesopores.
Figure 2 - Hierarchically-Porous Polymers
Figure 3 – Comparison of Porous-Polymers consisting of Mesopores only (left), and Mesopores and Micropores (right)
2015.01.13 View 8083 -
A Key Signal Transduction Pathway Switch in Cardiomyocyte Identified
A KAIST research team has identified the fundamental principle in deciding the fate of cardiomyocyte or heart muscle cells. They have determined that it depends on the degree of stimulus in β-adrenergic receptor signal transduction pathway in the cardiomyocyte to control cells' survival or death. The findings, the team hopes, can be used to treat various heart diseases including heart failure.
The research was led by KAIST Department of Bio and Brain Engineering Chair Professor Kwang-Hyun Cho and conducted by Dr. Sung-Young Shin (lead author) and Ph.D. candidates Ho-Sung Lee and Joon-Hyuk Kang. The research was conducted jointly with GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology) Department of Biological Sciences Professor Do-Han Kim’s team. The research was supported by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea, and the National Research Foundation of Korea. The paper was published in Nature Communications on December 17, 2014 with the title, “The switching role of β-adrenergic receptor signalling in cell survival or death decision of cardiomyocytes.”
The β-adrenergic receptor signal transduction pathway can promote cell survival (mediated by β2 receptors), but also can result in cell death by inducing toxin (mediated by β1 receptors) that leads to various heart diseases including heart failure. Past attempts to identify the fundamental principle in the fate determining process of cardiomyocyte based on β-adrenergic receptor signalling concluded without much success.
The β-adrenergic receptor is a type of protein on the cell membrane of cardiomyocyte (heart muscle cell) that when stimulated by neurohormones such as epinephrine or norepinephrine would transduce signals making the cardiomyocyte contract faster and stronger.
The research team used large-scale computer simulation analysis and systems biology to identify ERK* and ICER** signal transduction pathways mediated by a feed-forward circuit as a key molecular switch that decides between cell survival and death.
Weak β-adrenergic receptor stimulations activate ERK signal transduction pathway, increasing Bcl-2*** protein expression to promote cardiomyocyte survival. On the other hand, strong β-adrenergic receptor stimulations activate ICER signal transduction pathway, reducing Bcl-2 protein expression to promote cardiomyocyte death.
Researchers used a systems biology approach to identify the mechanism of B-blocker****, a common drug prescribed for heart failure. When cardiomyocyte is treated with β1 inhibitor, strong stimulation on β-adrenergic receptor increases Bcl-2 expression, improving the chance of cardiomyocyte survival, a cell protection effect.
Professor Kwang-Hyun Cho said, “This research used systems biology, an integrated, convergence research of IT (information technology) and BT (biotechnology), to successfully identify the mechanism in deciding the fate of cardiomyocytes based on the β-adrenergic receptor signal transduction pathway for the first time. I am hopeful that this research will enable the control of cardiomyocyte survival and death to treat various heart diseases including heart failure.”
Professor Cho’s team was the first to pioneer a new field of systems biology, especially concerning the complex signal transduction network involved in diseases. Their research is focused on modelling, analyzing simulations, and experimentally proving signal pathways. Professor Cho has published 140 articles in international journals including Cell, Science, and Nature.
* ERK (Extracellular signal-regulated kinases): Signal transduction molecule involved in cell survival
** ICER (Inducible cAMP early repressor): Signal transduction molecule involved in cell death
*** Bcl-2 (B-cell lymphoma 2): Key signal transduction molecule involved in promotion of cell survival
**** β-blocker: Drug that acts as β-adrenergic receptor inhibitor known to slow the progression of heart failure, hence used most commonly in medicine.
Picture: A schematic diagram for the β-AR signalling network
2015.01.05 View 12286 -
Professor Mikyoung Lim Receives the MediaV Young Researcher Award
Professor Mikyoung Lim of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at KAIST received the MediaV Young Researchers Award at the International Conference on Inverse Problems and Related Topics that took place at the National Taiwan University, Taiwan, on December 15-19, 2014.
The Conference established the MediaV Young Researcher Award in 2010 to recognize distinguished scholars who are age 40 or younger and have made important contributions to the field of inverse problems. This year, two recipients were chosen for the award.
Professor Lim has focused her research on the incremental reading of incomprehensible materials’ imaging and the effect of invisibility cloaking.
The other awardee was Kui Ren, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
2014.12.27 View 9833 -
How Science Understands the Beauty of Fine Arts from the Medieval Era to the 19th Century
A research team, consisting of Professor Hawoong Jeong of the Department of Physics at KAIST and Assistant Professor Seung-Woo Son of the Department of Applied Physics at Hanyang University, conducted a research project to understand visual representations through the eyes of science, i.e., quantitative analyses. Researchers took a sample of reproductions of European paintings from the 11th to the early 19th centuries and analyzed them based on three elements: the usage of color, the variety of painted colors, and the brightness of the images.
For the large-scale quantitative analysis, the research team utilized digital images of the paintings obtained from the Web Gallery of Art, a virtual museum and searchable database of European fine arts that includes over 29,000 pieces, ranging from the years 1000 to 1850. The Web Gallery classifies paintings into ten art historical periods such as Medieval, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, Rococo, Romantic, and Realist.
For each period, researchers investigated the frequency of certain colors which appear in paintings and examined the variety of painted colors, paying particular attention to paintings created by two iconoclastic artists from different eras: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jackson Pollock. In their works, the researchers discovered that specific pigments were preferred in each period, the result of reflecting historical facts into fine arts. For example, certain rare colors were used in the medieval age for political and religious reasons, and artists in that era employed a technique to layer one color over another dry color in order to express mixed colors, resulting in thickly textured brushstrokes because they considered mixing colors impure. Moreover, oil colors and color mixing techniques were not fully developed until the Renaissance age.
According to the research team, fewer numbers of colors were used before the 20th century, and the introduction of new expressionist tools, like the use of pastels and fingers directly on canvas, and painting techniques, such as “chiaroscuro” and “sfumato,” made much more colorful and natural expressions possible after the Renaissance period. The team said that the color arrangement of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings differed substantially from other paintings, showing randomness, especially in the spatial arrangement of colors.
Researchers also examined one of the artistic effects applied to paintings, contrast, an important element to express shape and space in two dimensional fine arts. Among various types of contrasts, they said, brightness contrast is the most important in art history due to the cultural background of Europe which usually adopts the contrast of light and darkness as a metaphorical expression. Taking the color information of pixels and their spatial arrangement, the researchers studied the prevalence of brightness contrast in European paintings over ten artistic periods by developing a correlation function to measure the contrast. These mathematical measurements quantitatively describe the birth of new painting techniques including chiaroscuro and sfumato and their increasing use. For instance, in the medieval age, the contour of objects or images in paintings was vague, but it became much clearer later in the Romantic period.
Professor Jeong said, “The complexity of the material world has been a long-lasting topic of interest in natural science, but research in the structural complexity of art and humanities has only begun since the development of the Internet, with the availability of big data in these fields. Our research is a meaningful attempt to understand the underling intricacy of art and humanities based on a scientific approach, expressed quantitatively.”
The research results were published online on December 11, 2014 in Scientific Reports, entitled “Large-Scale Quantitative Analysis of Painting Arts.” The paper was also selected as one of the weekly research highlights by Nature and is noted on its online journal’s website.
YouTube link on “the brightness contrast”: http://youtu.be/SFo0h1EU2aw
Figure 1: Constructing brightness surfaces and measuring roughness exponents
Figure 2: Visual representations of Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci, which was reproduced in accordance with the art historical periods
Figure 3: The screenshot of Nature online webpage
2014.12.23 View 8240 -
KAIST wins second place in unmanned boat competition
KAIST took second place in an international competition to promote technologies of the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).
Professor Jin-hwan Kim’s research team from KAIST’s Ocean Systems Engineering Department won the second place in Maritime RobotX Challenge which took place for the first time from October 20 - 26 in Marina Bay, Singapore.
Along with automobiles and drones, the necessity for unmanned boats has grown. To encourage and examine the development of these technologies, the U.S. Office of Naval Research decided to organize an unmanned boat competition which took place for the first time this year.
After three teams were selected from a domestic competition in each countries, a total of fifteen teams from five countries from the Pacific Rim including Korea, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Singapore competed. Teams from such universities as MIT, Tokyo University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and Queensland University of Technology participated. In addition to KAIST, Seoul National University and Ulsan University participated.
Using a 4.5 meters long and 2.5 meters wide unmanned boat provided by the organizer, each team had to implement an integrated system that combined a propulsion system, hardware, and autonomous software. Each team’s vessel had to perform tasks without manual control, employing autonomous driving through recognition of the course, searching underwater for acoustic sources, automatically approaching piers, remote observation of buoy, and avoidance and detection of obstacles.
Although KAIST outpaced MIT in the semifinal which selected six out of fifteen teams, it won the second place in the final. As well as winning second prize, KAIST also won best website prize and a special prize from the competition sponsor, Northrop Grumman Corporation, an American defense technology company, totaling 16,500 U.S. dollars of prize money.
The Vice President for Planning and Budget, Professor Seungbin Park said, “It was a great opportunity to showcase the advanced unmanned robot technology of Korea.” He added that “this raised KAIST’s reputation as a global research oriented university.”
Professor Kim commented, “Along with automobiles and drones, the necessity for the development of unmanned ocean vehicles such as unmanned boats and submarines are recognized these days.” He added that “the use of unmanned boats will make the process of channel investigation, ocean exploration, surveillance over water territories safer and more effective.”
Professor Kim’s team was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Samsung Heavy Industries, Sonar Tech, Daeyang Electric, and Red-one Technology.
KAIST Team's Unmanned Boat
The Competition's Missions
2014.12.12 View 10351 -
Nanoparticle Cluster Manufacturing Technique Using DNA Binding Protein Developed
Professor Hak-Sung Kim of the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST and Yiseul Ryu, a doctoral candidate, used the Zinc Finger protein that specifically binds to target DNA sequence to develop a new manufacturing technique for size-controllable magnetic Nanoparticle Clusters (NPCs). Their research results were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition online on 25 November 2014.
NPCs are structures consisting of magnetic nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles, and quantum dots, each of which are smaller than 100 nm (10-9m). NPCs have a distinctive property of collectivity not seen in single nanoparticles.
Specifically NPCS differ in physical and optical properties such as Plasmon coupling absorbance, energy transfers between particles, electron transfers, and conductivity. Therefore, NPCs can be employed in biological and medical research as well as the development of nanoelectric and nanoplasmon devices.
To make use of these novel properties, the size and the composition of the cluster must be exquisitely controlled. However, previous techniques relied on chemical binding which required complex steps, making it difficult to control the size and composition of NPCs.
Professor Kim’s team used Zinc Finger, a DNA binding protein, to develop a NPCs manufacturing technique to create clusters of the desired size easily. The Zinc Finger protein contains a zinc ion and specifically recognizes DNA sequence upon binding, which allows the exquisite control of the size and the cluster composition. The technique is also bio-friendly.
Professor Kim’s team created linear structure of different sizes of NPCs using Zinc Finger proteins and three DNA sequences of different lengths. The NPCs they produced confirmed their ability to control the size and structure of the cluster by using different DNA lengths.
The NPCs showed tripled T2 relaxation rates compared to the existing MRI contrast media (Feridex) and effectively transported to targeted cells. The research findings show the potential use of NPCs in biological and medical fields such as MRI contrast media, fluorescence imaging, and drug transport.
The research used the specific binding property of protein and DNA to develop a new method to create an inorganic nanoparticle’s supramolecular assembly. The technique can be used and applied extensively in other nanoparticles for future research in diagnosis, imaging, and drug and gene delivery.
Figure 1. A Mimetic Diagram of NPCs Manufacturing Technique Using DNA Binding Protein Zinc Finger
Figure 2. Transmission Electron Microscopy Images showing different sizes of NPCs depending on the length of the DNA
2014.12.04 View 11936 -
SmileGate Membership Program for Students and Video Game Industry in Korea
The Office of University and Industry Cooperation at KAIST and SmileGate, a video game developer based in Korea, agreed in June 2014 to cooperate in the development of talents for the video game industry in Korea and to support students’ startup efforts.
The company established the SmileGate Studio at the KAIST campus in 2010 and has been supporting KAIST students who are interested in video game design and development, such as hosting design competitions and offering networking opportunities as well as consulting services for startups.
The Studio launched a scholarship program called the “SmileGate Membership” in November this year to offer 12 students research funding, equipment and tools for game design and development, and mentoring services for eight months. Participating students will also receive free space for research and development, legal services for business development, investment advice, and assistance in networking with the global community after the completion of the program.
Professor Joongmyeon Bae, the Dean of the KAIST Office of University and Industry Cooperation, said, “This is a great opportunity for our students because they can actually utilize their passion and creativity to make their own games. KAIST and SmileGate will continue to lead the video game industry in Korea through close collaboration.”
2014.12.03 View 8093 -
Broadband and Ultrathin Polarization Manipulators Developed
Professor Bumki Min from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KAIST has developed a technology that can manipulate a polarized light in broadband operation with the use of a metamaterial.
It is expected that this technology will lead to the development of broadband optical devices that can be applied to broadband communication and display.
When an object or its structure is analyzed by using a polarized light such as a laser, the results are generally affected by the polarized state of the light. Therefore, in an optics laboratory, the light is polarized by various methods.
In such cases, researchers employ wave plates or photoactive materials. However, the performance of these devices depend vastly on wavelength, and so they are not suitable to be used as a polarizer, especially in broadband.
There were many attempts to make artificial materials that are very photoactive by using metamaterials which have a strong resonance. Nonetheless, because the materials had an unavoidable dispersion in the resonance frequency, they were not adequate for broadband operation.
Professor Min’s research team arranged and connected helical metamaterials that are smaller than the wavelength of light. They verified theoretically and experimentally that polarized light can be constantly rotated regardless of the wavelength by super-thin materials that have thickness less than one-tenth of the wavelength of the light. The experiment which confirmed the theory was conducted in the microwave band.
Broadband polarized rotational 3D metamaterials were found to rotate the polarized microwave within the range of 0.1 GHz to 40 GHz by 45 degrees regardless of its frequency. This nondispersive property is quite unnatural because it is difficult to find a material that does not change in a wide band.
In addition, the research team materialized the broadband nondispersive polarized rotational property by designing the metamaterial in a way that it has chirality, which determines the number of rotations proportional to the wavelength.
Professor Min said, “As the technology is able to manipulate ultrathin polarization of light in broadband, it will lead to the creation of ultra-shallow broadband optical devices.”
Sponsored by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea, this research was led by a PhD candidate, Hyun-Sung Park, under the guidance of Professor Min. The research findings were published online in the November 17th issue of Nature Communications.
Figure 1 – Broadband and Ultrathin Polarization Manipulators Produced by 3D Printer
Figure 2 – Concept of Broadband and Ultrathin Polarization Manipulators
2014.12.03 View 10510 -
Elsevier Selects a KAIST Graduate's Paper as the Top Cited Papers in 2011-2012
Dr. Myung-Won Seo, a graduate from the Department of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering at KAIST, published a paper in January 2011 in Chemical Engineering Journal, which was entitled “Solid Circulation and Loop-seal Characteristics of a Dual Circulating Fluidized Bed: Experiments and CFD Simulation.” His paper was selected by Elsevier as the Top Cited Papers of 2011-2012. The Chemical Engineering Journal is a renowned peer-reviewed journal issued by Elsevier.
Dr. Seo published another paper, “CFD Simulation with Experiments in a Dual Circulating Fluidized Bed Gasifier,” in January 2012 in Computers & Chemical Engineering, which was also selected as the Most Downloaded Papers in 2012-2013.
Dr. Seo graduated with a doctoral degree from KAIST in 2011. He is currently working at the Clean Fuel Laboratory, the Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon, as a researcher. His research areas are coal gasification, upgrading, and liquefaction, as well as energy and chemical production from low-grade fuels such as biomass and wastes.
2014.11.24 View 8761 -
KAIST Robotic Art: Exhibit called "Artificial Brain, Robots Evolve"
It is not difficult to find the desire to create a Neoanthropinae in the history of mankind. Humans evolve through man-made extensions and live by self-training them. This is Seung Hyun Son’s description which encourages us to discuss the changes man-made humanoids would bring to our future lives. He depicts this in “Theory of Evolution: From mankind to humanoid” in the “Artificial Brain, Robots Evolve” exhibition in the KI Building, KAIST, from 21 November 2014 to 8 February 2015.
KAIST's Art and Design Committee (led by President Myung Seok Kim) is holding the third experimental art exhibition based on the integration of science and art. The previous exhibition themes were “See the Sky” in 2012 and “Life is Beautiful” in 2013. The exhibition is divided into five subtopics: Move, Feel, Think, Express, and Experiment in Imagination.
The exhibits are by 17 artists including Nam June Paik, Nancy Lang, and KAIST Professor Myung Seok Kim. The main exhibits include “Cloud Face,” by Seung Baek Shin and Yong Hoon Kim, that shows up as error on computer but can be seen by human eyes and “Brains in Vat," by Boo Rok Lee and Myung Chul Kim based on KAIST's robotic lab’s materials and motif. Also, “The May of My Life” by Professor Myung Seok Kim’s lab reminds us of the relationship between robot and human.
President Myung Seok Kim said, “The range of content in cultural art will inspire students’ imagination.” He continued, “I hope this exhibition will awaken both scientific ideas and artistic sense.”
The opening ceremony of the exhibition will be held from 14:00, 21 November. The “Artificial Brain, Robots Evolve” exhibition is hosted by the Daejeon Museum of Art and sponsored by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Soma Museum.
Pictures from top to bottom are Cloud Face, Brains in Vat, The May of My Life_1, and The May of My Life_2.
2014.11.21 View 7327