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KAIST Prof. Park Selected as Winner of Clemson Award
Professor Tae-Gwan Park of the Department of Biological Sciences, KAIST, was chosen as the winner of the 2009 Clemson Award for Fundamental Research, university authorities said on Tuesday (April 7).
The award is the highest recognition of the Society for Biomaterials, an international organization of more than 3,000 members that promotes research in the field of biomaterials. Prof. Park is cited for his outstanding achievements in interdisciplinary research covering gene transferring, gene therapy and neogenesis. It is rare for a non-U.S. national to win the prize in the 36-year history of the award.
The award will be given to Professor Park at the Annual Meeting of the society which will be held in San Antonio, Texas, on April 22.
2009.04.09 View 13397 -
President Suh to Receive Honorary Doctorate from Romanian University
KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh will receive an honorary doctorate degree from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in a ceremony at the university on April 3, school authorities said.
Andrei Marga, rector of the largest Romanian university, said in a letter to President Suh that the university decided to award Suh the title of Doctor Honoris Cause of Babes-Bolyai University, the highest academic honor of the university, in recognition of his "prestigious actions as academic leader of a university known worldwide and for contribution to cooperation between Romania and South Korea."
The university"s honorary doctorate is awarded to persons with illustrious achievements in the fields of science, technology, art, philosophy, and theology. Recent winners of the honor include Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome; Nobel Prize winners Rich Ernest of Switzerland and George Palade of the United States; philosophers Paul Ricoeur of France and Richard Rorty of the United States, among others.
The Babes-Bolyai University located in Cluj-Napoca with about 50,000 students offers education in three different languages, Romanian, Hungarian and German. It has the longest academic history in Romania, founded as a Jesuit college in 1581.
2009.04.02 View 12706 -
KAIST Research Team Discovers Process for Rapid Growth of N-Doped CNT Arrays
A team of scientists led by Profs. Sang-Ouk Kim, Won-Jong Lee and Duck-Hyun Lee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has found a straightforward process for rapid growth of wall-number selected, nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays, university officials said on Monday (March 16).
KAIST researchers prepared highly uniform nanopatterned iron catalyst arrays by tilted deposition through block copolymer nanotemplates. This remarkably fast growth of highly uniform N-doped CNTs, whose material properties and chemical functionalizability are reinforced by N-doping, offers a new area of a large-scale nanofabrication, potentially useful for diverse nano-devices.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are of broad technical interest in electronics, photonics, energy devices, and other applications. However, establishing a straightforward process for mass production of uniform CNTs with desired structure and properties has been a long-standing challenge.
In particular, it was strongly desired to precisely control the numbers of walls and diameter of CNTs, which are decisive parameters for the physical properties of CNTs. In this respect, the preparation of monodisperse catalyst array having a narrow size distribution is generally considered an effective pathway to produce well-defined CNTs, since the number of walls and diameter of the produced CNTs are closely related to the catalyst size.
The finding was featured in the March 13 edition of Nano Letters, a leading journal in the nano technology field.
2009.03.20 View 14937 -
Five KAIST Students Offered Internship from Qualcomm
Qualcomm Inc., a wireless telecommunications research and development company based in San Diego, California, has offered internship for five KAIST students of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, university authorities said on Monday (Jan. 5).
The five students who are graduate and doctoral students studying communication and RFID (radio frequency identification) design will be working for six months at Qualcomm"s RFIC (radio frequency integrated circuits) Department in Santa Clara, Calif., as co-researchers. These interns will receive about $7,000 a month each with other benefits.
It is the first time that Qualcomm has offered internship for students outside the U.S., according to external relations officials at KAIST. Students who have shown outstanding research output during the internship period will be offered employment at Qualcomm.
"Qualcomm"s internship for KAIST students is designed to help young Korean talents to become professionals who will lead global advancement in the IT sector and strengthen its research network with Korea," Seung-Soo Kim, senior director of Qualcomm Korea, was quoted as saying.
Qualcomm plans to continue providing internship program for KAIST students, as well as pursuing joint research initiatives, the officials said.
2009.01.08 View 16490
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Prof. Cho Wins Best Paper Award
KAIST Prof. Nam-Zin Cho of the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, won the Best Thesis Award in the nuclear reactor physics category at the 2008 Winter Meeting of the American Nuclear Society held on Nov. 9-13 in Reno, Nevada.
His paper, entitled "Thermal Feedback Transient Analysis of a Pebble Fuel Based on the Two-Temperature Homogenized Model," was jointly authored by Hwi Yu and Jong-Un Kim under the guidance of Prof. Cho.
Prof. Cho was elected a fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 2001 and has served as the deputy editor of the Nuclear Science and Engineering, the research journal of the American Nuclear Society, since 1999.
2008.12.09 View 15642 -
Prof. Kim's Team Wins Silver Prize at International Design Contest
A KAIST team led by Prof. Myung-Suk Kim of the Department of Industrial Design won a silver prize (given by the Mayor of Osaka) at the 17th International Design Competition held at the Osaka International Convention Center on Nov. 27.
The team, made up of KAIST students Da-Woon Chung (representative), Ji-Hoon Kim and Bo-Yeon Kim, presented a sonic energy absorbing (SONEA) system to transform noise energy into electrical energy. At the 2008 competition held under the main theme of "Earth-Life: Clean Aqua, Clean Air, Clean Energy," a Chinese team won the gold prize, Japanese and Korean groups shared silver prizes, and bronze prizes were given to U.S. and German contestants.
It was noteworthy that the KAIST team was the only undergraduate contestants who won the prize. Ji-hoon Kim had already won a bronze prize last year at the same competition.
The International Design Competition Osaka has been held annually or biannually, organized by the Japan Design Foundation, since 1983 and is considered as one of the most prestigious design competitions.
2008.12.09 View 16327 -
Two KAIST Professors Elected Fellows of APS
Profs. Sung-Chul Shin and Chang-Hee Nam of the Department of Physics, KAIST, have recently been elected the 2009 fellows of the American Physical Society (APS), university officials said on Tuesday (Dec. 2).
The APS fellowship is a prestigious recognition of the two professors" outstanding academic achievements in the field of physics, the officials said. The selection criteria are known to be extremely stringent and only a small fraction of APS members become fellows.
Prof. Shin was cited for his pioneering contributions to the understanding of magnetization reversal dynamics, in particular critical scaling behavior of Barkhausen avalanches of 2D ferromagnets, and discovery of novel magnetic thin films and multilayers for high-density data storage.
Prof. Nam was recognized for his contributions to the theory and experiments of physical processes of high harmonic generation for the development of attosecond coherent x-ray sources and related femtosecond laser technology.
The American Physical Society, founded in 1899, is the world"s second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. It has 46,000 members across the world.
2008.12.04 View 15400 -
2008 IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots Opens
The 2008 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, an international gathering to identify new research trends and technology in humanoid robotics, will open a three-day session on Monday (Dec. 1) at the Hotel Rivera and KAIST in Daejeon.
The annual conference is organized by KAIST and the Robotics and Automation Society of the Institute for Electric and Electronic Engineers, a U.S.-based international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity.
The conference is expected to draw a total of 200 robotics researchers from 19 different countries. Prof. Jun-Ho Oh, at the Department of Mechanical Engineering who led the creation of Korea"s first humanoid robot Hubo, is serving as general chair of the conference. Prof. Oh was named the host of the 2008 conference at the 2007 conference held at the Carnegie Melon University of the United States. The eight-year old conference was inaugurated in Boston in 2000.
On the opening day of Dec. 1, seven lectures will be given on diverse areas of robotics including cognitive humanoid vision, and robot vision sensor and sensing. On the subsequent two days, a total of 110 papers will be presented.
During the conference period, a variety of robots produced by six local and foreign robot makers will be on demonstration, providing opportunities for researchers and industrial robot makers to share technological ideas.
Highlights of the conference will be special lectures by world-renowned robot researchers Prof. Yoshiyuki Sankai of University of Tsukuba, who has created an exoskeletal "robot suit," and Prof. Art Kuo of Univerity of Michigan who is regarded as a leading authority in dynamic walking.
Following the conference, all participants are scheduled to tour Prof. Oh"s Hubo Lab and the Human-Robot Interaction Research Center, both located at KAIST.
2008.12.01 View 15754
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KAIST Collaborating with U.S. Universities to Advance Humanoid Robotics
Hubo, a life-size walking bipedal humanoid robot, is perhaps the best-known character in Korea that KAIST has ever produced. It was shown to the government heads of the Asia-Pacific region during the APEC held in Busan, Korea, in 2005 and appeared at the hit concerts of the pop singer Jang-Hoon Kim. The humanoid robot is soon likely to catch the fancy of Americans as a U.S. government-funded project seeks to create a Hubo that can work and interact with people in collaboration with Korean scientists.
"We are going to give the brains to Hubo. (Japanese) Asimo can do only pre-programmed actions. We want to create a Hubo that can help people, interact with people," said Prof. Paul Oh of the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics at Drexel University in Philadelphia and leader of the five-year international project which was launched in November 2007.
The U.S.$2.5 million project is funded through the Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States. It brings together world-renowned experts in humanoid design and information technologies.
"Dr. Jun-Ho Oh"s lab at KAIST (that has created Hubo) is the world"s leader in humanoid design and the U.S. has advanced technologies in the areas such as artificial intelligence, mechanical learning and robot vision. Combining the strengths of the two countries can create a synergy effect and develop a more advanced humanoid robot," said Paul Oh. He is currently serving as Program Director of Robotics of the NSF which is overseeing robotics research (non-military) in the U.S. consisting over 150 robotics faculty.
Paul Oh"s research team consists of experts from five U.S. universities -- Drexel, Bryn Mawr College, Colby College, the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech -- and KAIST.
Leading a delegation of six professors and eight students, Dr. Paul Oh made a two-day visit to KAIST on Nov. 18-19 to review the progress of the project and have a technical meeting with participants.
"The U.S. universities participating in this program are scattered across the nation. So we decided to have a technical meeting here in Korea," he said.
Asked the reason why he chose KAIST as a partner for the program, Dr. Oh said that KAIST is willing to open Hugo to international researchers, whereas in Japan only Honda engineers are allowed to touch Asimo, which is a humanoid robot created by Honda Motor Company.
The project is to establish no barrier for roboticists anywhere in the world to pursue the humanoid research; a suite of humanoid platforms will be available for researchers to develop and advance capabilities like locomotion and human-robot interaction.
The team has been initially involved in development of three tools, all of which are based on the Hubo platform, in order to kick-start humanoid research in the U.S. They are the Mini-Hubo (a small, light-weight and affordable humanoid purchasable at the price lower than $8,000), On-Line Hubo (a program to operate Hubo online) and Virtual Hubo (a simulation program to do researches in cyberspace). As the first outcome of the project, the Mini-Hubo is expected to be released in the U.S. around next April.
Another important purpose of the PIRE program is to seek transformative models to train scientists and engineers to effectively work in global multi-disciplined design teams. To this end, an aggregate number of 20 students from U.S. universities are to stay at the KAIST during the next five years, with two students taking turns on a six-month term.
"I was really amazed how much work is done with small funding here. This is really an excellent example to learn," said Roy Gross, an undergraduate from Drexel who has been staying at Prof. Oh"s Lab for the past three months.
2008.11.21 View 19636 -
Method to Synthesize New Lithium Ion Battery Cathode Material Identified
A KAIST research team headed by Prof. Do-Kyung Kim at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering developed a technology to synthesize a new lithium ion battery spinel cathode which is regarded as a core part of hybrid and lithium battery cars.
The research was conducted in collaboration with a research team of Prof. Yi Cui at Stanford University"s Department of Chemistry. Their findings were introduced in the November issue of Nano Letters, one of the leading academic journals in nano-science.
The newly synthesized lithium ion battery spinel cathode known as spinel LiMn2O4 nanorods is attracting interests as an alternative cathode material since it is a low-cost, environmentally friendly substance for Li-ion battery cathodes. Its raw material is also highly available.
Lithium ion batteries with high energy and power density are important for consumer electronic devices, portable power tools, and vehicle electrification. LixCoO2 is a commonly used cathode material in commercial lithium iron batteries. However, the high cost, toxicity, and limited abundance of cobalt have been recognized to be disadvantageous.
2008.11.20 View 13584 -
KAIST Opens Cell Bench Research Center
KAIST opened a cell bench research center on the campus on Monday, Nov. 17, as a joint project with Samsung Electric Co. and Samsung Medical Center.
On hand at the opening ceremony were about 100 persons from the three organizations, including KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh, Samsung Electric"s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Byung-Cheon Koh and Samsung Medical Center Vice President Hyo-Geun Lim.
The newly-opened research center will be involved in the development of individually-tailored anti-cancer medicine using bio-inspired cell chips and technologies for clinical applications. Prof. Young-Ho Cho of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering was named director of the research center.
"Top-notch professionals from the electronic industry, academia and the medical community have gathered together to establish this research center. We expect the center will open a new path for the science and technology community and the industry to combine their strengths and develop innovative anti-cancer therapeutics," said KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh at the opening ceremony.
"The development of bio-cell chip technology represents a new challenge for the Samsung Electric which has focused on information technologies thus far. Through cooperation with KAIST and Samsung Medical Center, we expect to be able to develop a simple and efficient cure for cancer patients," commented Samsung Electric CTO Byung-Cheon Koh.
The research center will be initially concentrating on the development of cell chips for lung cancer, one of the primary causes of death for Koreans.
2008.11.17 View 17337 -
KAIST Research Team Unveils Method to Fabricate Photonic Janus Balls
A research team led by Prof. Seung-Man Yang of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering has found a method to fabricate photonic Janus balls with isotropic structural colors.
The finding draws attention since the newly-fabricated photonic balls may prove useful pigments for the realization of e-paper or flexible electronic displays.
The breakthrough was published in the Nov. 3 edition of the science journal "Advanced Materials." The Nov. 6 issue of "Nature" also featured it as one of the research highlights under the title of "Future Pixels."
Prof. Yang"s research team found that tiny marbles, black on one side and colored on the other, can be made by "curing" suspensions of silica particles with an ultraviolet lamp. When an electric field is applied, the marbles line up so that the black sides all face upwards, which suggests they may prove useful pigments for flexible electronic displays.
The researchers suspended a flow of carbon-black particles mixed with silica and a transparent or colored silica flow in a resin that polymerizes under ultraviolet light. They then passed the mixture through a tiny see-through tube. The light solidified the silica and resin as balls with differently colored regions, each about 200 micrometers in diameter.
Over the last decades, the development of industrial platforms to artificially fabricate structural color pigments has been a pressing issue in the research areas of materials science and optics. Prof. Yang, who is also the director of the National Creative Research Initiative Center for Integrated Optofluidic Systems, has led the researches focused on fabrication of functional nano-materials through the process of assembling nano-building blocks into designed patterns.
The "complementary hybridization of optical and fluidic devices for integrated optofluidic systems" research was supported by a grant from the Creative Research Initiative Program of the Ministry of Education, Science & Technology.
2008.11.12 View 15288