people
KAIST awarded two honorary doctoral degrees at this year’s commencement which took place on February 19, 2016.
Chang-Hee Kang (pictured on the left below), a former Speaker of the National Assembly of Korea and a serving member of the current Assembly, as well as Patrick Aebischer (pictured on the right), the President of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, received honorary doctorates in science and technology.
National Assemblyman Kang was born in 1946 and grew up in Daejeon. He graduated from the Korea Military Academy in 1969, and received a master’s degree in management from Kyungnam University, Korea, in 1980.
He began his distinguished political career with his first election to the 11th National Assembly in 1983. Since then, he has been reelected to the Assembly five times, becoming a leading politician representing Daejeon and Chungchong Province for the past 35 years.
Throughout his career in public service, he served in various important offices, such as Chief Secretary for the Prime Minster of Korea, Chairman of the Telecommunications, Science and Technology Committee for the National Assembly, and the first Minister of Science and Technology of Korea.
Assemblyman Kang has always been a strong advocate for the important role that science and technology continue to play in the growth of Korea. He has worked on many of the critical issues relating to science and research in the nation, including the establishment of the Ministry of Science and Technology in the Korean government, the legislation of special law for science and technology innovation, and the adoption of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) for the national standard of personal communication services.
In his acceptance speech for the degree, Assemblyman Kang said, “As a member of the science and technology community, and as a part of KAIST, I will strive harder to further advance the science and technology field of Korea.”
President Patrick Aebischer was born in 1954 in Fribourg, Switzerland. He was raised in a family of artists, from which his ingenuity, a character he has often displayed as a researcher, was nurtured.
He received a doctorate in medicine from the University of Geneva in 1980, and three years later, obtained a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Fribourg.
He started his teaching and research career at Brown University in the United States in 1984, where he was eventually promoted to Associate Professor in medical sciences. After living nearly a decade in the United States, President Aebischer returned to Switzerland and became a professor at the Lausanne University Medical School, while serving at the same time as the Director of its Surgical Research Division and Gene Therapy Center.
President Aebischer was appointed by the Swiss Federal Council to lead EPFL in 1999, one of the two most prestigious science and technology universities in the nation. From March 2000, he has served as the President of EPFL.
Under his leadership, EPFL has flourished and expanded its reach across the globe. The university’s core expertise, engineering, has successfully evolved. In addition to engineering, it now offers some of the best programs in natural and life sciences, finance, and management in the world.
His endeavors to promote “disruptive innovations” for the advancement of his own institution, as well as for the whole community of science and research, have led him to introduce many reforms and changes “to push the envelope” on behalf of higher education in science and technology.
In his acceptance speech, President Aebischer said, “I strongly believe that the future belongs to forward-looking and entrepreneurial universities, such as KAIST—to be able to offer a unique education aimed at finding solutions to the global issues such as climate change, dwindling natural resources, aging, cyber-security, and migration amongst others.”
