Research
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Establishment Agreement for KAIST-Poongsan Future Technology Research Center
KAIST and Poongsan Corporation agreed to found the KAIST-Poongsan Future Technology Research Center and held a ceremony to sign a memorandum of understanding in front of 30 attendees including KAIST President Steve Kang and Poongsan Chairman Jin Ryu on May 27 at KAIST.
The Research Center will develop basic technology in the fields of defense and high tech materials as well as build a new foundation for future Poongsan projects. Research areas include technologies for new materials, propulsion control, and defense.
To further this endeavor, Poongsan Corporation will support the KAIST-Poongsan Future Technology Research Center for 3 years through an investment of USD 2.95 million, personnel, and technology.
An agreement was made between KAIST and Poongsan to establish the Future Technology Research Center.
2014.05.29 View 7372 -
KAIST Conducts Safety Awareness Campaign for Research and Experiment
KAIST had an opening ceremony to hold its first “Safety Awareness Campaign for Research and Experiment” on 13th May. Over 100 people attended the ceremony, including President Steve Kang, Provost Gyu-Ho Park, and the Dean of the Administration Office Jae-Nam Lee, as well as the Chief of the Department of Research Environment Safety from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea.
On the day of the event, Year 2014 was proclaimed as the first year of accident-free KAIST research and laboratory facilities.
A certificate of merit was awarded to promote safe and comfortable research environments. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, KAIST, was selected as the department with the best lab safety management and the Department of Mechanical Engineering as the second.
Along with the merit award ceremony, the results of the “7th Research and Laboratory Safety Campaign Contest” were announced: “Lady First When Dating, Safety First When Experimenting!” written by Jong-Su Bae from the Department of Mechanical Engineering was selected as the best slogan, and Hyeon-Chae Noh from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering received the award for best poster.
President Steve Kang said, “KAIST is constantly striving to establish a comprehensive safety management system and to promote a safe research and laboratory environment,” and “To ensure the safety of KAIST and its members, we will be as supportive as possible.”
Below is the winner of the poster from the 7th Research and Laboratory Safety Campaign Contest.
What Would You Rather Wear? Gloves or Bandages?
Gloves worn in laboratories are protection from hazardous materials that students and researchers may come in contact with. The poster emphasizes the importance of wearing protective gloves when conducting research or experiment.
2014.05.19 View 7583 -
Clear Display Technology Under Sunlight Developed
The late Professor Seung-Man Yang
The last paper of the late Professor Seung-Man Yang, who was a past master of colloids and fluid mechanics
Practical patterning technology of the next generation optical materials, photonic crystals
The mineral opal does not possess any pigments, but it appears colorful to our eyes. This is because only a particular wavelength is reflected due to the regular nano-structure of its surface. The material that causes selective reflection of the light is called photonic crystals.
The deceased Professor Seung-Man Yang and his research team from KAIST’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department ha ve developed micro-pattern technology using photolithographic process. This can accelerate the commercialization of photonic crystals, which is hailed as the next generation optics material.
The research results were published in the April 16th edition of Advanced Materials, known as the most prestigious world-renowned journal in the field of materials science.
The newly developed photonic crystal micro-pattern could be used as a core material for the next generation reflective display that is clearly visible even under sunlight. Since it does not require a separate light source, a single charge is enough to last for several days.
Until now, many scientists have endeavored to make photonic crystals artificially, however, most were produced in a lump and therefore lacked efficiency. Also, the low mechanical stability of the formed structure prevented from commercialization.
In order to solve these problems, the research team has copied the nano-structure of opals.
Glass beads were arranged in the same nano-structure as the opal on top of the photoresist material undergoing photocuring by ultraviolet light. The glass beads were installed in the photoresist materials, and UV light was selectively exposed on micro regions. The remaining region was developed by photolithographic process to successfully produce photonic crystals in micro-patterns.
The co-author of the research, KAIST Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department’s Professor Sin-Hyeon Kim, said, “Combining the semiconductor process technology with photonic crystal pattern technology can secure the practical applications for photonic crystals.”He also predicted “This technology can be used as the key optical material that configures the next generation reflective color display device with very low power consumption.”
The late Professor Seung-Man Yang was a world-renowned expert in the field of colloids and fluid mechanics. Professor Yang published over 193 papers in international journals and continued his research until his passing in last September.
He received Du Pont Science and Technology Award in 2007, KAIST Person of the Year 2008, Gyeong-Am Academy Award in 2009, as well as the President’s Award of the Republic of Korea in March 2014. The researchers devoted the achievement of this year’s research to Professor Yang in his honor.
Research was conducted by KAIST Photonic-fluidic Integrated Devices Research Team, as a part of the Creative Research Program funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea.
Figure 1. Opal [left] and the nano glass bead arrangement structure within the opal [right]
Figure 2. Process chart of the photonic crystal micro-pattern formation based on photolithography
Figure 3. Opal structure [left] and inverted structure of the opal [right]
Figure 4. Photonic crystal micro-pattern in solid colors
Figure 5. Photonic crystal micro-pattern that reflects two different crystals (Red, Green) [left] and pixelated pattern of photonic crystal in three primary colors (Red, Green, Blue) [right] that is applicable to reflective displays
2014.05.14 View 11367 -
Partnership Agreement between KAIST and SK Telecom for Cyber Security
KAIST
and SK Telecom, one of the largest wireless telecommunications operators in
Korea, signed a memorandum of understanding on the industry and university cooperation
to establish a research center for cyber security on March 18, 2014.
The
center will conduct research projects to improve privacy protection, develop core
technologies needed for cyber security, train engineers and researchers, and
host seminars and conferences.
The
two organizations will implement the first joint research project on the
development of software-defined network-based solutions and universal subscriber
identity module-based personal identification solutions.
2014.03.26 View 6735 -
High Resolution 3D Blood Vessel Endoscope System Developed
Professor Wangyeol Oh of KAIST’s Mechanical Engineering Department has succeeded in developing an optical imaging endoscope system that employs an imaging velocity, which is up to 3.5 times faster than the previous systems. Furthermore, he has utilized this endoscope to acquire the world’s first high-resolution 3D images of the insides of in vivo blood vessel.
Professor Oh’s work is Korea’s first development of blood vessel endoscope system, possessing an imaging speed, resolution, imaging quality, and image-capture area. The system can also simultaneously perform a functional imaging, such as polarized imaging, which is advantageous for identifying the vulnerability of the blood vessel walls.
The Endoscopic Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) System provides the highest resolution that is used to diagnose cardiovascular diseases, represented mainly by myocardial infarction.
However, the previous system was not fast enough to take images inside of the vessels, and therefore it was often impossible to accurately identify and analyze the vessel condition. To achieve an in vivo blood vessel optical imaging in clinical trials, the endoscope needed to be inserted, after which a clear liquid flows instantly, and pictures can be taken in only a few seconds.
The KAIST research team proposed a solution for such problem by developing a high-speed, high-resolution optical tomographic imaging system, a flexible endoscope with a diameter of 0.8 mm, as well as a device that can scan the imaging light within the blood vessels at high speed. Then, these devices were combined to visualize the internal structure of the vessel wall.
Using the developed system, the researchers were able to obtain high-resolution images of about 7 cm blood vessels of a rabbit’s aorta, which is similar size to human’s coronary arteries. The tomography scan took only 5.8 seconds, at a speed of 350 scans per second in all three directions with a resolution of 10~35㎛.
If the images are taken every 200 ㎛, like the currently available commercial vascular imaging endoscopes, a 7cm length vessel can be imaged in only one second.
Professor Wangyeol Oh said, “Our newly developed blood vessel endoscope system was tested by imaging a live animal’s blood vessels, which is similar to human blood vessels. The result was very successful.”
“Collaborating closely with hospitals, we are preparing to produce the imaging of an animal’s coronary arteries, which is similar in size to the human heart,” commented Professor Oh on the future clinical application and commercialization of the endoscope system. He added, “After such procedures, the technique can be applied in clinical patients within a few years.”
Professor Oh’s research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Global Frontier Project by the Korean government. The research results were published in the 2014 January’s edition of Biomedical Optics Express.
Figure 1: End portion of optical endoscope (upper left)
Figure 2: High-speed optical scanning unit of the endoscope (top right)
Figure 3: High-resolution images of the inside of in vivo animal blood vessels (in the direction of vascular circumference and length)
Figure 4: High-resolution images of the inside of in vivo animal blood vessels (in the direction of the vein depth)
2014.03.25 View 10279 -
Visit by Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, President of the Royal Society
Sir Paul Maxime
Nurse, who is an English geneticist and cell biologist, visited KAIST and gave
a lecture entitled The Great Ideas of
Biology on March 11, 2014.
Sir Paul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt for their discoveries
of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle.
He was Professor of Microbiology at the University
of Oxford, CEO of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Cancer Research UK, and
President of Rockefeller University in New York. Sir Paul is currently the President of
the Royal Society as well as Director and Chief Executive of the Francis Crick
Institute.
Founded in London in 1660, the Royal Society is composed of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of
science, engineering, and medicine.
Below is a summary of his lecture, The Great Ideas of Biology:
Four major ideas of biology
are the theory of genes, evolution by natural selection, the proposal that the
cell is the fundamental unit of all life, and the chemical composition of a cell.
When considering the
question “what is life?” these ideas come together. The special way cells reproduce
provides the conditions by which natural selection takes place, allowing living
organisms to evolve. The organization of chemistry within the cell provides
explanations for life’s phenomena.
In addition, an emerging idea
is the nature of biological self-organization with which living cells and organisms
process information and acquire specific forms. These great ideas have
influenced one another and changed the way we perceive biology and science
today.
2014.03.11 View 9609 -
Festival Featuring Asia's Best Science Students to be Held
The first Electronic Olympics, which will host students from five top Asian research-centered universities, will be held in August at KAIST. Students will take part in competitive events and explore cultural diversity. Student representatives of HKUST, NTU, TITECH, Tsinghua University, and KAIST gathered on February 20 to begin planning the tentatively named “ASPIRE E-Olympics.”
The key words of this Olympics are "Harmony" and "Competition." The events will be composed of an AI programming contest, SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) picture contest, and the other technology-based contests. Cultural events, where each university’s students can interact, will also be prepared.
ASPIRE (Asian Science and Technology Pioneering Institutes of Research and Education) events have been held from 2009. Previously, the ASPIRE forum has been an exchange event for groups of vice presidents and graduate school students from the five schools to exchange achievements in education and research. This year, it has been extended to undergraduates.
Yoseop Kim, KAIST’s student body vice president, said that he wants to make a MOU with some of Asia’s best research-centered universities and develop it into something similar to the Davos Forum. His intention is to support the E-Olympics in the hope that ASPIRE will become a top university consortium.
From left, HKUST, KAIST, NTU, TITECH, Tsinghua University Logos
Student representative group photo of Top Asian Research-Centered Universities
Electronic Olympics for students from five top Asian science and engineering universities to be held in August
2014.02.27 View 7780 -
A game enthusiast received a Ph.D. at the 2014 commencement
A high school student, who was addicted to video gaming and had barely managed to gain entrance to KAIST, became a star of its 2014 commencement ceremony.
The student was Tae-Woo Park who received his Ph.D. in games at 32 years of age.
Park entered KAIST in 2002 as an undergraduate student. However, owning to bad grades, he was not accepted to the graduate school of KAIST until 2006. He began playing games at the age of 7, which distracted him from his studies at an early age. Nevertheless, he was able to complete master’s degree after two and a half years, which normally takes two years for average students.
Professor Joon-Hwa Song saw a possibility from his student’s experience of producing and commercializing a mobile puzzle game while Park was working as a president of the game club, HAJE, at KAIST. Professor Song advised him to take the advantage of his interests and try developing game platforms and contents. Park decided to develop a game that could help others and would change people’s negative views of games. He created a whole new generation of games.
In order to find ideas for games that can be easily enjoyed in daily lives, Park went to numerous gyms, swimming pools, daycare centers, and parks to analyze people’s behaviors and discussed with his colleagues who were also interested in games. During this process, the experience of organizing creative ideas through cooperation and discussions became a great foundation for his future research.
He observed some people quitting midway during a workout on treadmills because they were bored with working out alone. From this, Park embarked on developing a new style of game that allowed people to exercise together.
Park used the system on a treadmill, which recognizes the speed of the person running to automatically adjust the machine’s speed, to develop an interactive game platform for Swan Boat. The Swan Boat game is a race exercise game that adjusts the direction according to speed difference between two players. The game utilizes the difference of running speed between two people on treadmills to change the direction of the boat.
With the Swan Boat game, people can now play games and exercise at the same time. The technology also allows online access anywhere in the world, which means checking friends’ rankings at nearby gyms or homes, or even a World Gym Running Contest.
In addition, Park helped develop various next generation exercise games and life-based services, including the sparrow chirp application, which finds children that go astray, or an avatar game that utilizes the user’s daily life patterns. These results and papers attracted attention from international societies and have also won a number of awards.
Professor Song said, “There has been no precedent of receiving a Ph.D. at KAIST for developing games, however, Park’s case has given courage to many people that if you can create what is really required in everyday life, you can indeed receive a doctor’s degree.”
Park remarked, “I’d like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Professor Song, for giving me courage. I want to continue to make games that can help people’s lives in the future.”
Park will continue his work at the NASA Ames Research Center this June.
2014.02.27 View 9651 -
KAIST-Saudi Nuclear Workforce Training
Nuclear Engineering Intensive Course Program Held in Saudi Arabia from January 5th to 23rd
KUSTAR (The Khalifa University of Science and Technology Studies)-KAIST Institute of Education began its Nuclear Engineering Intensive Course Program on 5th January with researchers from K.A.CARE (King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy) of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
This program, which was lasted until 23rd January, provided education to students on the basic technologies in the field of nuclear power.
The course involves a wide range of lectures, such as basic nuclear physics, applications using radiation, nuclear reactor design and safety, as well as nuclear power engineering.
In order to utilize the nuclear power and renewable energy, K.A.CARE was established in April 2010. The institution is also involved in the construction of nuclear infrastructure, including the site investigations, the establishment of regulatory bodies and state-owned nuclear companies, along with the newly launched workforce-training program.
The Director of the KUSTAR-KAIST Education Research Institute, Professor Soong-Heung Jang said, “This program is the beginning of long-term cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Our experience can be the basis for the construction of an extensive training program that involves many areas of nuclear engineering field.”
KAIST has been working in close cooperation with various institutions around the world, which also includes the establishment of KUSTAR-KAIST Institute of Education and Research in July 2010. KAIST is also actively cooperating with UAE Khalifa University in Middle East, sharing faculty, holding joint research programs and exchanging students.
2014.02.03 View 9821 -
Professor Suk-Bok Chang receives 14th Korea Science Award in the field of Chemistry
Professor Suk-Bok Chang from the Department of Chemistry at KAIST received the “2013 Korea Science Award” in chemistry hosted by the National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, Republic of Korea.
The Korea Science Award is a presidential award of Korea, which was first established in 1987 to recognize research excellence in natural science. Three scientists are selected for the award in every other year.
Professor Chang primarily researches the catalyzing mechanism of carbon-hydrogen bonds in organic molecules. He has succeeded in making great progress in the field of organic chemistry especially in developing a new type of transition metal catalytic behavior that can be applied to low-reactivity compounds.
Hydrocarbons are abundant in nature, but its unreactive nature in ambient conditions makes it unsuitable as reactant for compound synthesis. In addition, the mechanism behind transition metal catalyzed carbon-hydrogen bond synthesis has not been proven sufficiently.
The prediction that fossil fuels will be depleted before the end of the century makes hydrocarbon synthesis an extremely important matter.
The need for an effective hydrocarbon synthesis method inspired Professor Chang to pursue research in the transition metal catalysis method and to develop a catalytic system that would allow efficient synthesis even in ambient conditions.
Professor Chang has been the lead researcher for the Institute for Basic Science’s “molecule catalysis reaction research team” since December 2012 and has been carrying out this research in KAIST.
2014.01.27 View 9574 -
Mechanism in regulation of cancer-related key enzyme, ATM, for DNA damage and repair revealed
Professor Kwang-Wook Choi
A research team led by Professor Kwang-Wook Choi and Dr. Seong-Tae Hong from the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST has successfully investigated the operational mechanism of the protein Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated (ATM), an essential protein to the function of a crucial key enzyme that repairs the damaged DNA which stores biometric information. The results were published on December 19th Nature Communications online edition.
All organisms, including humans, constantly strive to protect the information within their DNA from damages posed by a number of factors, such as carbonized materials in our daily food intake, radioactive materials such as radon emitting from the cement of buildings or ultraviolet of the sunlight, which could be a trigger for cancer.
In order to keep the DNA information safe, the organisms are always carrying out complex and sophisticated DNA repair work, which involves the crucial DNA damage repair protein ATM. Consequently, a faulty ATM leads to higher risks of cancer.
Until now, academia predicted that the Translationally Controlled Tumor Protein (TCTP) will play an important role in regulating the function of ATM. However, since most of main research regarding TCTP has only been conducted in cultured cells, it was unable to identify exactly what mechanisms TCTP employs to control ATM.
The KAIST research team identified that TCTP can combine with ATM or increase the enzymatic activity of ATM. In addition, Drosophilia, one of the most widely used model organisms for molecular genetics, has been used to identify that TCTP and ATM play a very important role in repairing the DNA damaged by radiation. This information has allowed the researchers to establish TCTP’s essential function in maintaining the DNA information in cell cultures and even in higher organisms, and to provide specific and important clues to the regulation of ATM by TCTP.
Professor Kwang-Wook Choi said, “Our research is a good example that basic research using Drosophilia can make important contributions to understanding the process of diseases, such as cancer, and to developing adequate treatment.”
The research has been funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea, and the National Research Foundation of Korea.
Figure 1. When the amount of TCTP protein is reduced, cells of the Drosophila's eye are abnormally deformed by radiation. Scale bars = 200mm
Figure 2. When the amount of TCTP protein is reduced, the chromosomes of Drosophilia are easily broken by radiation. Scale bars = 10 mm.
Figure 3. When gene expressions of TCTP and ATM are reduced, large defects occur in the normal development of the eye. (Left: normal Drosophilia's eye, right: development-deficient eye)
Figure 4. ATM marks the position of the broken DNA, with TCTP helping to facilitate this reaction. DNA (blue line) within the cell nucleus is coiled around the histone protein (green cylinder). When DNA is broken, ATM protein attaches a phosphate group (P). Multiple DNA repair protein recognizes the phosphate as a signal that requires repair and gathers at the site.
2014.01.07 View 11849 -
Professor Yong-Hee Lee of Physics Received the Humboldt Research Award
In recognition of his past accomplishments in research and teaching, Professor Yong-Hee Lee of Physics at KAIST received the Humboldt Research Award in November 2013. The Humboldt Research Award is annually given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to internationally renowned scientists and scholars in the fields of biology, chemistry, computer science, economics, linguistics, management, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and physics. The winners of the award are offered with 60,000 Euros of research grant as well as an opportunity to undertake prolonged periods of research in collaboration with researchers in Germany.Professor Lee, who may be the first Korean physicist receiving the award, plans to conduct joint research with colleagues at the Technical University of Berlin and University of Würzburg.
2014.01.05 View 7940