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Partnership with École Centrale Paris
Courtesy of École Centrale Paris News: http://www.ecp.fr/lang/en/home/news?actuID=48892
Strengthening of the partnership betwenn CentraleSupélec and KAIST University, South Korea
The two institutions signed a new agreement.
Hervé Biausser (left in the picture), Director of CentraleSupélec, has met Sung-Mo Steve Kang (right in the picture), the President of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). They signed an agreement aiming to strengthen the partnership between the two institutions concerning research and higher education.
CentraleSupélec and KAIST have cooperated since 2010 on research projects in the context of the Erasmus Mundus BEAM and EASED programs, which are coordinated by CentraleSupélec.
The next step is now the application of graduate academic mobility in the common fields of excellency of the institutions: energy, electronic, physics and mathematics.
2015.11.02 View 5832 -
Yang-Hann Kim named recipient of the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education by the Acoustical Society of America
Courtesy of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Press release issued by ASA on October 8, 2015:
Yang-Hann Kim named recipient of the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education by the Acoustical Society of America
Melville (NY), 8 October 2015—Yang-Hann Kim, Professor at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), Daejeon, has been named recipient of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education. The Rossing Prize is awarded to an individual who has made significant contributions toward furthering acoustics education through distinguished teaching, creation of educational materials, textbook writing and other activities. The Prize will be presented at the 170th meeting of the ASA on 4 November 2015 in Jacksonville, Florida.
“It is my great honor to receive the Rossing Prize, which has been given to outstanding scholar members of ASA since 2003. I never dreamed to be one of them.” said Kim. “I must express my deep respect and love to my friend Thomas Rossing: I have known him more than 20 years, always respect what he has done for teaching, writing books, and pioneering work in musical acoustics.”
Yang-Hann Kim is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He received a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His main research interests in acoustics began with “sound visualization” resulted in the development of the “sound camera” which makes any sound visible instantly. Then he moved to “sound manipulation.” Using his manipulation technology, one can move any sound in space and time, positioning sound, and can create a private sound zone. Sound Visualization and Manipulation, (Wiley, 2013), summarizes these two fields. Dr. Kim’s textbook, Sound Propagation: An Impedance Based Approach (John Wiley and Sons, 2010), is well acknowledged by the associated professional communities as one of best acoustics textbooks. Using his teaching experience at KAIST, he created a YouTube lecture on acoustics and vibration which is also available in MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). He has also presented lectures to over 500 engineers and technicians for the past 30 years.
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The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America—the world’s leading journal on acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The Society also holds two major scientific meetings per year. For more information about the Society visit our website, www.acousticalsociety.org.
2015.10.06 View 9594 -
Professor Kyung-Won Chung Receives the 2015 Design Value Awards
The Design Management Institute (DMI) announced eleven winners of its 2015 Design Value Awards.
Professor Kyung-Won Chung of the Industrial Design Department at KAIST took one of the four First Place Design Value Awards. The award ceremony was held on September 28, 2015, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston.
DMI is an international organization that has actively advocated for the strategic value of design, sponsoring research, publishing academic papers, connecting members across disciplines and the globe, and sharing best design practices.
Commemorating its 40th anniversary, DMI created the inaugural Design Value Awards this year, which honors the contributions of design teams who have delivered significant value through design or design management practices.
There were four categories of the awards: first, second, and third prize, and Honorable Mention. The first place had four winners; both the second and third took two winners each. The honorable mention included three awardees.
The award noted Professor Chung's contributions to the development of design management theory and practices in Korea and his dedication to elevate KAIST’s industrial design department to one of the 30 leading design institutions in the world during his 30-year career at the university.
DMI also appointed Professor Chung a Life Fellow.
Professor Chung said,
“I am greatly honored to receive such a significant award, the equivalent of the Academy Awards in the field of design. I hope this award will encourage the further development of the Korean design industry to lead the global design community.”
He has served in various important positions in public and private organizations, including as the president of the Korea Institute of Design Promotion, Vice Mayor of Design for the City of Seoul, Advisor to the Design Division of Samsung Electronics, and a member of organizing committee of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.
2015.10.04 View 7348 -
Discovery of Redox-Switch of KEenzyme Involved in N-Butanol Biosynthesis
Research teams at KAIST and Kyungpook National University (KNU) have succeeded in uncovering the redox-switch of thiolase, a key enzyme for n-butanol production in Clostridium acetobutylicum, one of the best known butanol-producing bacteria.
Biological n-butanol production was first reported by Louis Pasteur in 1861, and the bioprocess was industrialized usingClostridium acetobutylicum. The fermentation process by Clostridium strains has been known to be the most efficient one for n-butanol production. Due to growing world-wide issues such as energy security and climate change, the biological production of n-butanol has been receiving much renewed interest. This is because n-butanol possesses much better fuel characteristics compared to ethanol, such as higher energy content (29.2 MJ/L vs 19.6 MJ/L), less corrosiveness, less hygroscopy, and the ease with which it can be blended with gasoline and diesel.
In the paper published in Nature Communications, a broad-scope, online-only, and open access journal issued by the Nature Publishing Group (NPG), on September 22, 2015, Professor Kyung-Jin Kim at the School of Life Sciences, KNU, and Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, have proved that the redox-switch of thiolase plays a role in a regulation of metabolic flux in C. acetobutylicum by using in silico modeling and simulation tools.
The research team has redesigned thiolase with enhanced activity on the basis of the 3D structure of the wild-type enzyme. To reinforce a metabolic flux toward butanol production, the metabolic network of C. acetobutylicum strain was engineered with the redesigned enzyme. The combination of the discovery of 3D enzyme structure and systems metabolic engineering approaches resulted in increased n-butanol production in C. acetobutylicum, which allows the production of this important industrial chemical to be cost competitive.
Professors Kim and Lee said, "We have reported the 3D structure of C. acetobutylicum thiolase-a key enzyme involved in n-butanol biosynthesis, for the first time. Further study will be done to produce butanol more economically on the basis of the 3D structure of C. acetobutylicum thiolase."
This work was published online in Nature Communications on September 22, 2015.
Reference: Kim et al. "Redox-switch regulatory mechanism of thiolase from Clostridium acetobutylicum," Nature Communications
This research was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST), Korea, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Advanced Biomass Center through the Global Frontier Research Program of the MEST, Korea.
For further information, contact Dr. Sang Yup Lee, Distinguished Professor, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea (leesy@kaist.ac.kr, +82-42-350-3930); and Dr. Kyung-Jin Kim, Professor, KNU, Daegu, Korea (kkim@knu.ac.kr, +82-53-950-6088).
Figure 1: A redox-switch of thiolase involves in butanol biosynthesis in Clostridium acetobutylicum. Thiolase condenses two acetyl-CoA molecules for initiating four carbon flux towards butanol.
Figure 2: Thiolase catalyzes the condensation reaction of acetyl-CoA to acetoacetyl-CoA. Two catalytic cysteine residues at 88th and 378th are oxidized and formed an intermolecular disulfide bond in an oxidized status, which results in inactivation of the enzyme for n-butanol biosynthesis. The intermolecular disulfide bond is broken enabling the n-butanol biosynthesis, when the environment status is reduced.
2015.09.23 View 10852 -
Nature Biotechnology Nominates Sang Yup Lee of KAIST for Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014
Nature Biotechnology, recognized as the most prestigious journal in the field of biotechnology, has released today its list of the Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014. Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ranked seventh in the list. He is the only Asian researcher listed.
The journal, in partnership with IP Checkups, a patent analytics firm, presents an annual ranking of researchers based on their paper and patent output. The list includes, among others, each researcher’s most-cited patent in the past five years and their H index, a measurement to evaluate the impact of a researcher’s published work utilizing citation analysis. (More details can be found at http://www.nature.com/bioent/2015/150801/full/bioe.2015.9.html.)
American institutions made up the majority of the list, with 18 universities and research institutes, and the remainder was filled by KAIST in Korea and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia.
Globally known as a leading researcher in systems metabolic engineering, Professor Lee has published more than 500 journal papers and 580 patents. He has received many awards, including the Citation Classic Award, Elmer Gaden Award, Merck Metabolic Engineering Award, ACS Marvin Johnson Award, SIMB Charles Thom Award, POSCO TJ Park Prize, Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award, and the Ho Am Prize in Engineering.
2015.08.27 View 10541 -
Professor Sang-Min Bae Receives the 2015 Red Dot Design Award
Professor Sang-Min Bae and his research team from the Industrial Design Department of KAIST have received three awards from the 2015 Red Dot Design Award: the Best of the Best Award and two Design Concept Awards.
Being one of the most prestigious international design awards, the Red Dot Design Award serves to identify good design concept and innovation that will be the precursors of tomorrow’s great product. Its annual award ceremony will take place on September 25, 2015, at the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore.
This year, the Award received 4,680 entries from 61 countries, and only the top 5.7% of them was able to garner the awards. In addition to two Red Dot Design Concept Awards, Professor Bae’s team won the Best of the Best Award, coming through a four hundred to one competition.
Awarded the Best of the Best Award, Boxchool is a modular classroom built on shipping containers whose aim is to give underprivileged children equal opportunities for learning. Jointly designed with an IT corporation in Korea, SK Telecom, the container is also a smart classroom.
Boxchool received the Best of the Best Award in recognition of its contribution to giving an equal learning opportunity to needy children, as well as its environmental characteristics.
The research team strengthened the mobility of the container and creatively addressed problems associated with using containers as classrooms such as insulation and inadequate space in environments which hamper teaching. The modular classroom can function in any setting since it can generate electricity from installed solar panels. The rainwater utilization system allows autonomous operation of the classroom.
The team earned the Red Dot Design Concept Award for a self-generating interactive tent, which was jointly designed with Kolon Sport, a Korean outdoor products company, as an industry-university cooperation project. The interactive tent differs from conventional tents by adding features that allow users to engage with the environment. For example, the installed organic solar cells allowed users to have prolonged outdoor activities by supplying electricity generated therefrom. Users can also enjoy greater ventilation. This permits the tent to be utilized as a temporary residence in the third world.
Another recipient of the Red Dot Design Concept Award, Snow Energy is a portable self-generating lamp and charger, which contains a thermo-element, generating electricity from temperature difference. Electricity is generated by pouring hot water inside a tank and cold water into a neighboring space. Snow Energy, which is sustainable and eco-friendly, will be especially helpful during outdoor activities when there is no electricity available.
Professor Bae's research team, ID+IM, has endeavored to address inequality and philanthropy through two projects, the Nanum (a Korean word to mean “sharing”) and the Seed Projects. Since 2005, they have received internationally recognized awards more than 40 times.
Picture 1: Recipient of the Best of the Best Award of the 2015 Red Dot Design Award, Boxchool is a modular classroom built on shipping containers
Picture 2: Recipient of the 2015 Red Dot Design Concept Award, the self-generating interactive tent
Picture 3: Recipient of the 2015 Red Dot Design Concept Award, Snow Energy is a portable self-generating lamp and charger which generates electricity from the temperature difference
2015.08.05 View 11376 -
Dr. Se-Jung Kim Receives the Grand Prize at the International Photo and Image Contest on Light
Dr. Se-Jung Kim of the Physics Department at KAIST received the Grand Prize at the 2015 Photo and Image Contest of the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.
The United Nations has designated the year 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.
The Optical Society of Korea celebrated the UN’s designation by hosting an international photo and image contest on the theme of light and optics related technology.
Dr. Kim presented a photo of images taken from a liquid crystal, which was entitled “A Micro Pinwheel.” She took pictures of liquid crystal images with a polarizing microscope and then colored the pictures. The liquid crystal has self-assembled circle domain structures, and each domain can form vortex optics. Her adviser for the project is Professor Yong-Hoon Cho of the Physics Department.
Her work was exhibited during the annual conference of the Optical Society of Korea, which was held on July 13-15, 2015 at Gyeong-Ju Hwabaek International Convention Center. It will also be exhibited at the National Science Museum in Gwacheon and the Kim Dae-Jung Convention Center in Gwangju.
Picture: A Micro Pinwheel
2015.07.31 View 10198 -
Professor Jinwoo Shin of the Electrical Engineering Department Receives the 2015 ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Research Award
Professor Jinwoo Shin of the Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST was selected as the recipient of the 2015 ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Research Award.
As a computer systems performance evaluation community, SIGMETRICS annually awards a junior researcher. He was selected as the 8th annual recipient, being the first from an Asian university.
Professor Shin was recognized for his work in theoretical analysis of stochastic queueing networks and machine learning. He said, “I would like to contribute to the expansion of computing and network theory in Korea wherein those fields are unrecognized.”
He has received numerous awards including Kennneth C. Sevcik (Best Student Paper) Award at SIGMETRICS 2009, George M. Sprowls (Best MIT CS PhD Thesis) Award 2010, Best Paper Award at MOBIHOC 2013, Best Publication Award from INFORMS Applied Probability Society 2013, and Bloomberg Scientific Research Award 2015.
2015.06.21 View 9619 -
Science and Technology Policy Professor Chihyung Jeon Awarded Rachel Carson Fellowship
KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy Professor Chihyung Jeon has been awarded the Rachel Carson Fellowship 2015-2016.
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society is a research center for environmental humanities and social sciences, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It was founded by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany and the Deutsches Museum as a joint initiative in 2009.
Rachel Carson Center supports researches in humanities and social sciences on the interactions between the environment and the society, following the footsteps of Rachel Cason, who raised awareness on the chemical environmental damage and started global environmental movement through her published book “Silent Spring” in 1962.
The center is awarding Rachel Carson Fellowships to established researchers to fund their writing and promote exchange of research. This year, 31 fellowships were awarded.
Professor Jeon will conduct research on "A Dredged Nation: The Four Rivers Restoration Project and the Envirotechnical Transformation of South Korea" and will also hold an additional post of International Curatorial Fellow at the Deutsches Museum.
2015.06.11 View 9982 -
The Acoustical Society of America Names Yang Hann Kim of KAIST the Recipient of the 2015 Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education
The award, given to Dr. Kim in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of acoustics education, will be presented during the 170th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America on November 2-6, 2015 in Jacksonville, Florida.
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) announced today that Professor Yang Hann Kim of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) was the 12th recipient of the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education. Dr. Kim is the first recipient selected from a non-English-speaking nation.
The Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education was established in 2003 from a generous gift made to the ASA Foundation by Thomas D. Rossing to recognize an individual who has made significant contributions to the advancement of acoustics education through distinguished teaching, creation of educational materials, textbook writing, and other activities.
During 25 years of teaching and conducting research in acoustics, noise, and vibration at KAIST, Dr. Kim has advised 26 doctorates and published over 200 research papers in journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society of America, Journal of Sound and Vibration, and Journal of Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing. He also wrote two acoustics textbooks for university education, which has been widely read worldwide. The textbook titles are: Sound Propagation: An Impedance Based Approach (Wiley, July 2010) and with the co-author, Dr. Jung-Woo Choi, Sound Visualization and Manipulation (Wiley, September 2013).
Since 2009, Professor Kim has lectured an online course entitled “Introduction to Acoustics,” offering students and the general public throughout the world guidance to study acoustics through the basic concept of impedance, for example, on vibrations and waves.
Dr. Kim will receive the award during ASA’s 170th conference to be held on November 2-6, 2015 at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Hotel in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.
For the list of previous recipients of the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education,
see:http://acousticalsociety.org/funding_resources/prizes#rossing
2015.06.04 View 9229 -
Professor Sang-Yup Lee Receives the Order of Service Merit Red Stripes from the Korean Government
The government of the Republic of Korea named Professor Sang-Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering at KAIST as the fiftieth recipient of the Order of Service Merit Red Stripes on May 19, 2015.
This medal is awarded to government employees, officials, and teachers in recognition of their contributions to public services including education.
Professor Lee is regarded as a leading scientist in the field of metabolic engineering, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics on microorganism producing various primary and secondary metabolites. He contributed significantly to the advancement of bio-based engineering research in Korea.
In addition, his research in microorganism metabolic engineering propelled him to the front of his field, making him the world’s founder of systems metabolic engineering, inventing numerous technologies in strain development.
Professor Lee has received many patent rights in bioprocess engineering. While at KAIST, he applied for 585 patents and registered 227 patents. In particular, he has applied for 135 patents and registered 99 patents in the past five years, successfully turning research results into commercial applications.
Professor Lee said, “I’m glad to contribute to the development of Korean science and technology as a researcher and teacher. I would like to share this honor with my students, master’s and doctoral students in particular, because without their support, it wouldn’t have been possible to pull off the highest level of research results recognized by this medal.”
2015.05.21 View 8469 -
KAIST to Host Conference on the Financial Technology Industry
To take place in the Korea Federation of Banks building on May 21, 2015, Seoul
Around 200 individuals to be present including Oh-Kyu Kwon, the former Minister of Finance and Economy and Chang-Hyun Yun, the former president of Korea Institute of Finance
KAIST will hold a conference to discuss prospects for Korea’s financial technology industry (FinTech) and to address the rapid changes taking place in both national and global finance markets.
The conference will be held in the Convention Hall of the Korea Federation of Banks building in Myeongdong, Seoul on May 21, 2015 with a theme entitled “The Challenge and the Task of Korean FinTech Industry in the Global Finance Market.”
Around 200 individuals including Oh-Kyu Kwon, the former Minister of Finance and Economy, Jiwon Jung, a member of a standing committee of Financial Services Commission, and Steve Kang, the President of KAIST will attend the meeting.
The term “FinTech” originates from the combination of two words, finance and technology, to describe a new form of financial system based on Information Technology (IT). The precise definition and boundary of FinTech is not fully established yet, but this will provide Korea with an opportunity to take the lead in the finance industry with its cutting-edge IT.
The conference will focus on the methods by which Korean FinTech companies can acquire a competitive edge in the global finance market. The keynote speaker, Tong-Suk Kim, the Dean of College of Business, KAIST, will speak about “The Challenge and the Task of Korean FinTech.” The talk will emphasize how the FinTech industry can create an innovative industry, destroying the existing paradigm of payment system and Internet-only banks.
The keynote speech will be followed by a talk on “The Requirements for Establishing Korean FinTech Ecosystem” by Jong-Hyun Kim, a researcher at Woori Finance Research Institute, Korea.
Additional talks, which will be given by KAIST professors, are:
“Korean Economy and the Role of FinTech” by Professor Young-Sun Kwon of the Department Business and Technology Management;
“Korean FinTech in ICT Perspective” by Professor Yoon-Joon Lee of the Department of Computer Science;
“The Current State and Possibilities of Korean FinTech” by Professor Byung-Tae Lee of the School of Management Engineering; and
“The Task and Challenge of Promoting FinTech Industry” by Professor Byung-Chun Kim of the School of Management Engineering.
Also, Professor Chang-Hyun Yoon of the School of Business Administration, University of Seoul, will give a talk on “The Crisis in Korean Finance Industry and the Role of FinTech.”
The conference will also hold a discussion session on “The Promotion Methods for Korean FinTech Industry.” Participants for the discussion will include Jae-Sung Song from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Dong-Hwan Kim from the Financial Services Commission, Jeon Jin from Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI), Hyo-Jin Lee of 8Percent, In-Chang Hwang from the Korea Insurance Research Institute, and Jae-Kyu Lee from Koscom.
Byung-Chun Kim, the Director of KAIST’s Financial Engineering Research Center, who organized the FinTech conference said, “FinTech industry will evolve from simply attempting to attract consumers to understanding the lifestyle patterns of consumers to provide customized service and information.”
2015.05.20 View 9889