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Professor Lee to Head the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology
Emeritus Professor In Lee of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at KAIST was appointed to the post of President of the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) in Ethiopia. His term will begin on August 1, 2016 and end on July 31, 2018, which can be extended up to five years.
AAiT is an affiliated institute of Addis Ababa University, a distinguished national university in Ethiopia, and specializes in education and research in engineering and technology. There are currently 5,500 undergraduate and 4,500 graduate students enrolled at the institute.
The Ethiopian government has recognized the importance of science and technology for the future of the country. The government intends to develop AAiT into a distinguished research university similar to KAIST, and thus sought advice from KAIST to recommend an administrator who will head AAiT. Upon recommendation by KAIST President Steve Kang, Professor Lee was appointed.
Professor Lee graduated from Seoul National University with bachelor's and master’s degrees in aeronautical engineering and earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics from Stanford University.
He has served as the President of The Korean Society for Aeronautics and Space Sciences, the Director of the KAIST Satellite Technology Research Center, and a Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Center.
2016.08.03 View 8688 -
Professor Kun-pyo Lee Appointed Honorary Fellow of the Design Research Society
Founded in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1966, the Design Research Society is an international academic organization that promotes excellence in design and supports the interests of the design research community.
Professor Kun-pyo Lee of the Industrial Design Department at KAIST received his honorary fellowship from the Society at its 50th international conference held from June 27, 2016 to July 3, 2016 in Brighton, UK.
The Society recognized Professor Lee’s academic achievements and his contribution to the advancement of design research nationally and globally. To date, only eight researchers have received honorary fellowships from the Society, and he is the first Asian to become an honorary fellow.
Professor Lee has worked at KAIST for more than 30 years as a professor in industrial engineering and served on various important positions such as the president of the Korean Society of Design Science, the president of the International Association of Societies of Design Research, an executive vice president of the Corporate Design Center at LG Electronics, and an advisory board member for Human-centered Design Network in Japan and UXnet in the United States.
By introducing the concept of user experience (UX) in Korea for the first time, he developed this field while focusing on user-centered designs to optimize interactive digital products as well as interaction design to create mental and physical interfaces between people and interactive digital products, services, and systems.
Professor Lee said, “I am pleased to become an honorary fellow of the Design Research Society. For quiet some time, industrial design remained in the domain of practical studies, lacking the kind of support needed to grow as an independent academic and research discipline, but this has changed rapidly in recent years. I will continue to remain actively involved in the development of industrial design engineering in Korea and the world.”
2016.07.19 View 8121 -
Doctoral Student Receives the Best Paper Award from the International Metabolic Engineering Conference 2016
So Young Choi, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST, received the Student and Young Investigator Poster Award at the 11th International Metabolic Engineering Conference held in Awaji, Japan on June 26-30.
Choi received the award for her research on one-step fermentative production of Poly(lactate-co-glycolate) (PLGA) from carbohydrates in Escherichia coli, which was published in the April 2016 issue of Nature Biotechnology.
In her paper, she presented a novel technology to synthesize PLGA, a non-natural copolymer, through a biological production process. Because of its biodegradability, non-toxicity, and biocompatibility, PLGA is widely used in biomedical and therapeutic applications, including surgical sutures, prosthetic devices, drug delivery, and tissue engineering.
Employing a metabolic engineering approach, Choi manipulated the metabolic pathway of an Escherichia coli bacterium to convert glucose and xylose into the biosynthesis of PLGA within the cell. Previously, PLGA could be obtained only through chemical synthesis.
Choi said, “I’m thrilled to receive an award from a flagship conference of my research field. Mindful of this recognition, I will continue my research to produce meaningful results, thereby contributing to the development of science and technology in Korea.”
The International Metabolic Engineering Conference is a leading professional gathering where state-of-the-art developments and achievements made in the field of metabolic engineering are shared. With the participation of about 400 professionals from all around the world, the conference participants discussed this year’s theme of “Design, Synthesis and System Integration for Metabolic Engineering.”
2016.07.07 View 11148 -
Top 10 Emerging Technologies by World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on Emerging Technologies announced its annual list of breakthrough technologies, the “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016,” on June 23, 2016. The Meta-Council chose the top ten technologies based on the technologies’ potential to improve lives, transform industries, and safeguard the planet. The research field of systems metabolic engineering, founded by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at KAIST, was also citied. Systems metabolic engineering, which combines elements of synthetic biology, systems biology, and evolutionary engineering, offers a sustainable process for the production of useful chemicals in an environmentally friendly way from plants such as inedible biomass, reducing the need of using fossil fuels. Details about the list follow below:
https://www.weforum.org/press/2016/06/battery-powered-villages-sociable-robots-rank-among-top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2016
The picture below shows the “systems metabolic engineering of E. coli for the production of PLGA." PLGA is poly(lactate-co-glycolate), which is widely used for biomedical applications, and has been made by chemical synthesis. Now it is possible to produce PLGA eco-friendly by one-step fermentation of a gut bacterium which is developed through systems metabolic engineering.
2016.06.27 View 11094 -
KAIST to Participate in Summer Davos Forum 2016 in China
A group of KAIST researchers will share their insights on the future and challenges of the current technological innovations impacting all aspects of society, while showcasing their research excellence in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Scientific and technological breakthroughs are more important than ever as key agents to drive social, economic, and political changes and advancements in today’s world. The World Economic Forum (WEF), an international organization that provides one of the broadest engagement platforms to address issues of major concern to the global community, will discuss the effects of these breakthroughs at its 10th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, a.k.a., the Summer Davos Forum, in Tianjin, China, June 26-28, 2016.
Three professors from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) will join the Annual Meeting and offer their expertise in the fields of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics to explore the conference theme, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Transformational Impact.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution, a term coined by WEF founder, Klaus Schwab, is characterized by a range of new technologies that fuse the physical, digital, and biological worlds, such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and automation.
Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department will speak at the Experts Reception to be held on June 25, 2016 on the topic of “The Summer Davos Forum and Science and Technology in Asia.” On June 27, 2016, he will participate in two separate discussion sessions.
In the first session entitled “What If Drugs Are Printed from the Internet?,” Professor Lee will discuss the impacts of advancements in biotechnology and 3D printing technology on the future of medicine with Nita A. Farahany, a Duke University professor. Clare Matterson, the Director of Strategy at Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom, will serve as the moderator. The discussants will note recent developments made in the way patients receive their medicine, for example, downloading drugs directly from the internet and the production of yeast strains to make opioids for pain treatment through systems metabolic engineering. They will also suggest how these emerging technologies will transform the landscape of the pharmaceutical industry in the years to come.
In the second session, “Lessons for Life,” Professor Lee will talk about how to nurture life-long learning and creativity to support personal and professional growth necessary in an era of the new industrial revolution.
During the Annual Meeting, Professors Jong-Hwan Kim of the Electrical Engineering School and David Hyunchul Shim of the Aerospace Department will host, together with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and AnthroTronix, an engineering research and development company, a technological exhibition on robotics. Professor Kim, the founder of the internally renowned Robot World Cup, will showcase his humanoid soccer-playing micro-robots and display their various cutting-edge technologies such as imaging processing, artificial intelligence, walking, and balancing. Professor Shim will present a human-like robotic piloting system, PIBOT, which autonomously operates a simulated flight program by employing control sticks and guiding an airplane from takeoff to landing.
In addition, the two professors will join Professor Lee, who is also a moderator, to host a KAIST-led session on June 26, 2016, entitled “Science in Depth: From Deep Learning to Autonomous Machines.” Professors Kim and Shim will explore new opportunities and challenges in their fields from machine learning to autonomous robotics, including unmanned vehicles and drones.
Since 2011, KAIST has participated in the World Economic Forum’s two flagship conferences, the January and June Davos Forums, to introduce outstanding talents, share their latest research achievements, and interact with global leaders.
KAIST President Steve Kang said, “It is important for KAIST to be involved in global forums that identify issues critical to humanity and seek answers to solve them, and where our skills and knowledge in science and technology can play a meaningful role. The Annual Meeting in China will become another venue to accomplish this.”
2016.06.27 View 12611 -
KAIST Researchers Receive the 2016 IEEE William R. Bennett Prize
A research team led by Professors Yung Yi and Song Chong from the Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST has been awarded the 2016 William R. Bennett Prize of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which is the most prestigious award in the field of communications network. The IEEE bestows the honor annually and selects winning papers from among those published in the past three years for its quality, originality, scientific citation index, and peer reviews.
The IEEE award ceremony will take place on May 24, 2016 at the IEEE International Conference on Communications in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The team members include Dr. Kyoung-Han Lee, a KAIST graduate, who is currently a professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea, Dr. Joo-Hyun Lee, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University in the United States, and In-Jong Rhee, a vice president of the Mobile Division at Samsung Electronics. The same KAIST team previously received the award back in 2013, making them the second recipient ever to win the IEEE William R. Bennett Prize twice.
Past winners include Professors Robert Gallager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sachin Katti of Stanford University, and Ion Stoica of the University of California at Berkeley.
The research team received the Bennett award for their work on “Mobile Data Offloading: How Much Can WiFi Deliver?” Their research paper has been cited more than 500 times since its publication in 2013. They proposed an original method to effectively offload the cellular network and maximize the Wi-Fi network usage by analyzing the pattern of individual human mobility in daily life.
2016.05.02 View 13643 -
President Sung-Mo Kang Receives the Jang Young-sil Award
On April 22, 2016, President Sung-Mo Kang of KAIST became the 18th recipient of the Jang Young-sil Award. The Jang Young-sil Memorial Association of Korea awarded the prize to him at the Korea Press Center in Seoul.
The award, created in 1999 by the Jang Young-sil Memorial Association of Korea to recognize those scientists who have made significant contributions to the development of Korean science and technology, is bestowed annually.
Jang Young-sil was a highly regarded Korean scientist and astronomer during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), whose major inventions were a sundial, a water clock, and a rain gauge.
In the award ceremony, the association said that President Kang had devoted much of his life to the advancement of science education and research, globally and nationally, as an educator, scholar, administrator, and researcher and that his accomplishments have served as an example of leadership for young scientists.
In his acceptance speech, President Kang expressed his gratitude for the award and said,
“I am honored to receive an award in the name of our great ancestor scientist Jang Young-sil who, despite his low birth as a peasant, rose to become an excellent scientist and built a remarkable legacy of science for Korea. While cherishing his spirit, creativity and grit, I will continue to working hard to foster outstanding scientists and engineers who are needed not only by Korea but also by the global community.”
In the photo, Dr. Gun-Mo Chung (pictured on the right), the former Minister of Science and Technology of Korea presents the Jang Young-sil Award to President Sung-Mo Kang (left).
2016.04.22 View 5666 -
Next-Generation Holographic Microscope for 3D Live Cell Imaging
KAIST researchers have developed a revolutionary bio-medical imaging tool, the HT-1, to view and analyze cells, which is commercially available.
Professor YongKeun Park of the Physics Department at KAIST and his research team have developed a powerful method for 3D imaging of live cells without staining. The researchers announced the launch of their new microscopic tool, the holotomography (HT)-1, to the global marketplace through a Korean start-up that Professor Park co-founded, TomoCube (www.tomocube.com).
Professor Park is a leading researcher in the field of biophotonics and has dedicated much of his research career to working on digital holographic microscopy technology. He collaborated with TomoCube’s R&D team to develop a state-of-the-art, 2D/3D/4D holographic microscope that would allow a real-time label-free visualization of biological cells and tissues.
The HT is an optical analogy of X-ray computed tomography (CT). Both X-ray CT and HT share the same physical principle—the inverse of wave scattering. The difference is that HT uses laser illumination whereas X-ray CT uses X-ray beams. From the measurement of multiple 2D holograms of a cell, coupled with various angles of laser illuminations, the 3D refractive index (RI) distribution of the cell can be reconstructed. The reconstructed 3D RI map provides structural and chemical information of the cell including mass, morphology, protein concentration, and dynamics of the cellular membrane.
The HT enables users to quantitatively and non-invasively investigate the intrinsic properties of biological cells, for example, dry mass and protein concentration. Some of the research team’s breakthroughs that have leveraged HT’s unique and special capabilities can be found in several recent publications, including a lead article on the simultaneous 3D visualization and position tracking of optically trapped particles which was published in Optica on April 20, 2015.
Current fluorescence confocal microscopy techniques require the use of exogenous labeling agents to render high-contrast molecular information. Therefore, drawbacks include possible photo-bleaching, photo-toxicity, and interference with normal molecular activities. Immune or stem cells that need to be reinjected into the body are considered particularly difficult to employ with fluorescence microscopy.
“As one of the two currently available, high-resolution tomographic microscopes in the world, I believe that the HT-1 is the best in class regarding specifications and functionality. Users can see 3D/4D live images of cells, without fixing, coating or staining cells. Sample preparation times are reduced from a few days or hours to just a few minutes,” said Professor Park.
Two Korean hospitals, Seoul National University Hospital in Bundang and Boramae Hospital in Seoul, are using this microscope currently. The research team has also introduced the HT-1 at the Photonics West Exhibition 2016 that took place on February 16-18 in San Francisco, USA.
Professor Park added, “Our technology has set a new paradigm for cell observation under a microscope. I expect that this tomographic microscopy will be more widely used in future in various areas of pharmaceuticals, neuroscience, immunology, hematology, and cell biology.”
Figure 1: HT-1 and Its Specifications
Figure 2: 3D Images of Representative Biological Cells Taken with the HT-1
2016.03.29 View 12949 -
KAIST Identifies 27 Research Topics on Local Community
In tandem with the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology and Daejeon Civic Society Research Center, the Research Institute for Social Technology and Innovations at KAIST conducted a study on social challenges facing the local community and identified 27 research issues that could be solved with the help of science and technology.
The results of the study were released on March 10, 2016.
The research team prepared a report in an effort to encourage universities, research centers, and local citizens to cooperate in investigating social issues and finding their solutions.
The 27 issues were first chosen by pre-surveys and in-depth interviews with local citizens, and then discussed through public and expert workshops. Among the issues were environment, agriculture, energy, culture, public safety, family, and social integration. The team presented industrial complexes, agricultural facilities, and factories in rural areas were the most urgent issues of social concern within a city and province.
Hong-Gyu Lee, Director of the Research Institute for Social Technology and Innovations, said,
“The most serious problem that should be tackled in Daejon City is the chronic stench and garbage odor coming from industrial complexes, while environmental damages arisen from the development of new agricultural technology and factories are the major challenge in rural areas of Chungnam Province. This report is meaningful because citizens, universities, and research institutions worked together to find important issues related to the development of local community and explored solutions to solve those issues with the advancement of science and technology.”
2016.03.12 View 5239 -
KAIST Graduate Han Receives a 2016 PECASE Award
President Barack Obama of the United States (US) announced 105 recipients of the 2016 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) on February 18. Among the awardees was a graduate from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST.
Dr. Jin-Woo Han has worked as a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center since graduating from KAIST in 2010. This year, he is the only awardee who received a doctoral degree from a Korean university to become a recipient of the highest honor bestowed by the US government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
The awards ceremony will take place in early spring at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Han has been involved in the development of radiation tolerant semiconductor devices as well as radiation and gas sensors under Dr. Meyya Meyyappan, Chief Scientist of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames Research Center.
KAIST and the NASA Ames Research Center made a research collaboration agreement in 2008, under which KAIST has sent 12 post-doctoral fellows to the center to date.
The PECASE awards, established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the US President. Awardees are selected for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community services as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.
2016.02.23 View 9843 -
Workshop on Techniques in Prediction Analysis for the Industry
There has been growing interest in the value and the application of “big data” in recent years. To meet this interest, a workshop was held to discuss the possibility and the future of prediction analysis, which is the next big step in data mining after big data.
On February 25 in COEX, Seoul, the Department of Knowledge Service Engineering at KAIST held the 4th knowledge service workshop on “Techniques in Prediction Analysis for the Industry.”
Predication analysis is a technique that can predict the future based on the understanding of the past and the present through analyzing “big data.” If “big data” is fuel in figurative sense, the prediction analysis serves as the engine.
The Department seeks to help those companies interested in data mining by introducing fundamentals and some application examples to the executives of companies who are interested in implementation of the technique.
The lecture was delivered by six professors from the Department of Knowledge Service Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at KAIST.
Thomas Miller, the author of Modeling Techniques in Predictive Analytics, covered the contents of his book at the event. Professor Moon-Yong Yi, Chair of the Department of Knowledge Service Engineering, said, “This conference will be important to companies that are considering the implementation of the prediction analysis as well as to students who are interested in the field.”
2016.02.22 View 5351 -
Professors Jeon and Choi Receive the Young Scientist Award
Professors Seokwoo Jeon of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Jang Wook Choi of the Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability (EEWS) at KAIST received the Young Scientist Award.
The award ceremony took place at the Korea Press Center in Seoul. Presented by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning of Korea and the National Academy of Engineering of Korea, the Young Scientist Award is given to outstanding scientists under the age of 40 who have demonstrated excellence in their research in the field of natural science.
Each year the award is given to three scientists in different areas.
Professor Jeon was recognized for his achievement in creating a new property of materials. He studied synthesis and development of low-dimensional nanomaterials and developed a large area nanostructure.
Professor Choi’s research area was to discover optimal materials for rechargeable batteries. By applying his research, he developed rechargeable batteries with high efficiency, making the wearable system more feasible.
2016.01.11 View 12101