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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 5121 -
KAIST Invites Entrepreneurs and Experts to Participate in a Social Technology Innovation Symposium
The Research Institute for Social Technology and Innovation (RISTI) at KAIST hosted the Social Technology Innovation Symposium on November 4, 2015 in KI building, to which 100 social business entrepreneurs and experts in the field were invited.
Social businesses refer to activities of companies, which strive to resolve social problems such as environmental issues, income inequality, and aging societies while seeking profit at the same time. This is different from companies taking social responsibility and non-profit organization serving the community in that they attempt to solve social problems through a sustainable business model.
Held under the theme of “technology capabilities of companies and social business strategies,” this symposium was the first to gather representatives from social venture companies, medium-sized enterprises, and major companies at one place to share their experiences in a social business and to discuss future tasks.
The symposium was divided into sessions with three different topics ranging from social business strategies using information technology, a social business and its business model, and social business strategies of major companies.
The symposium started with keynote speeches delivered by Professor HongKyu Lee, RISTI, and Professor Hong-Tak Lim, RISTI, who discussed the role of technology in a social business. It was followed by plenary sessions led by CEOs who are running social businesses such as the Sharing and Technologies Incorporated Project, Simwon Technology, Ecojun Company, Underdogs, and the Farming Fund as well as by representatives from a social responsibility section of CJ management team and the social responsibility council of SK. In the future, these talks will serve as a medium to share their experiences in social businesses and to discuss the role of technology in the business. Some talks touched upon topics such as development of platforms for social innovation, social businesses employing disabled workers, and crowd funding for farming.
The Director of RISTI, Professor HongKyu Lee said, “The symposium will be the first to have people from leading companies in social businesses in Korea in one place.” He added, “This will be a great opportunity for anyone to know what will be the future of social businesses, which were created to solve the social problems caused by capitalism.”
The symposium was sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy of Korea.
2015.10.30 View 7492 -
KAIST Invites the World's Top Accelerators to the "Start-up Accelerator Forum"
The Institute for Start-up KAIST hosted a forum on start-up accelerators in cooperation with the KAIST Pangyo Center. More than 100 experts participated in the start-up forum including experts from the world’s top accelerators from Europe and the United States.
Start-up accelerators are companies or institutions that provide support to start-up companies in the early stages to grow into sustainable ventures. Their roles include providing networking opportunities to mentors in technology, marketing, design, business strategy, and potential investors by hosting Demo Days.
The KAIST Start-up Forum is an annual event organized by the Institute for Start-up KAIST to encourage conversations between universities and corporations to promote start-up companies and innovative business strategies.
The forum’s organizers invited Professor Olli Vuola of Aalto University in Finland; Milton B. McColl, the CEO of Gauss Surgical; Kara Shurmanitine, the Director of the Division of Global Partnership at Mass Challenge; and Jimmy Kim, the co-founder of SparkLabs Global Ventures.
2015.10.29 View 3329 -
Professors Sukbok Chang and Jang-Wook Choi Receive the 2015 Knowledge Award from the Korean Government
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MISP) of the Republic of Korea announced the 2015 Knowledge Awards on October 20, 2015. Two KAIST professors received the award.
Established in 2009, the awards are presented to Korean scientists whose publications have contributed to the international science community. Specifically, the MISP used the two biggest science databases, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus, to identify ten highly cited papers ranked in the top 1% by total citations in the past ten years.
Professor Sukbok Chang of Chemistry (left in the picture below) is a global authority in the field of catalytic hydrocarbon functionalization. His paper entitled “Palladium-catalyzed C-H Functionalization of Pyridine N-Oxides: Highly Selective Alkenylation and Direct Arylation with Unactivated Arenes,” which was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2008, was once selected by Thomson Reuters as one of the “Most Influential Research Papers of the Month.” In 2011, the American Chemical Society included his paper in the list of the top 20 research papers that were most frequently cited in the last three years.
Professor Jang-Wook Choi of the Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water, and Sustainability) has been known for his leading research in rechargeable battery, supercapacitor, and materials chemistry. In particular, his work on secondary fuel cells attracted significant attention from academia and industry in Korea. Professor Choi developed a super-thin flexible lithium-ion battery this year, thinner than a credit card, which lasts longer than the existing batteries and with greater performance. He also developed new electrode materials for next-generation sodium-ion and magnesium secondary fuel cells.
Professor Sukbok Chang (left) and Professor Jang-Wook Choi (right)
2015.10.23 View 9962 -
Establishment of System Metabolic Engineering Strategies
Although conventional petrochemical processes have generated chemicals and materials which have been useful to mankind, they have also triggered a variety of environmental problems including climate change and relied too much on nonrenewable natural resources. To ameliorate this, researchers have actively pursued the development of industrial microbial strains around the globe in order to overproduce industrially useful chemicals and materials from microbes using renewable biomass. This discipline is called metabolic engineering.
Thanks to advances in genetic engineering and our knowledge of cellular metabolism, conventional metabolic engineering efforts have succeeded to a certain extent in developing microbial strains that overproduce bioproducts at an industrial level. However, many metabolic engineering projects launched in academic labs do not reach commercial markets due to a failure to fully integrate industrial bioprocesses.
In response to this, Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee and Dr. Hyun Uk Kim, both from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST, have recently suggested ten general strategies of systems metabolic engineering to successfully develop industrial microbial strains. Systems metabolic engineering differs from conventional metabolic engineering by incorporating traditional metabolic engineering approaches along with tools of other fields, such as systems biology, synthetic biology, and molecular evolution.
The ten strategies of systems metabolic engineering have been featured in Nature Biotechnology released online in October 2015, which is entitled "Systems strategies for developing industrial microbial strains."
The strategies cover economic, state-of-the-art biological techniques and traditional bioprocess aspects. Specifically, they consist of: 1) project design including economic evaluation of a target bioproduct; 2) selection of host strains to be used for overproduction of a bioproduct; 3) metabolic pathway reconstruction for bioproducts that are not naturally produced in the selected host strains; 4) increasing tolerance of a host strain against the bioproduct; 5) removing negative regulatory circuits in the microbial host limiting overproduction of a bioproduct; 6) rerouting intracellular fluxes to optimize cofactor and precursor availability necessary for the bioproduct formation; 7) diagnosing and optimizing metabolic fluxes towards product formation; 8) diagnosis and optimization of microbial culture conditions including carbon sources; 9) system-wide gene manipulation to further increase the host strain's production performance using high-throughput genome-scale engineering and computational tools; and 10) scale-up fermentation of the developed strain and diagnosis for the reproducibility of the strain's production performance.
These ten strategies were articulated with successful examples of the production of L-arginine using Corynebacterium glutamicum, 1,4-butanediol using Escherichia coli, and L-lysine and bio-nylon using C. glutamicum.
Professor Sang Yup Lee said, "At the moment, the chance of commercializing microbial strains developed in academic labs is very low. The strategies of systems metabolic engineering outlined in this analysis can serve as guidelines when developing industrial microbial strains. We hope that these strategies contribute to improving opportunities to commercialize microbial strains developed in academic labs with drastically reduced costs and efforts, and that a large fraction of petroleum-based processes will be replaced with sustainable bioprocesses."
Lee S. Y. & Kim, H. U. Systems Strategies for Developing Industrial Microbial Strains. Nature Biotechnology (2015).
This work was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Change on Systems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries (NRF-2012M1A2A2026556) and by the Intelligent Synthetic Biology Center through the Global Frontier Project (2011-0031963) from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), Korea, and through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea. This work was also supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Picture: Concept of the Systems Metabolic Engineering Framework
(a) Three major bioprocess stages (b) Considerations in systems metabolic engineering to optimize the whole bioprocess. List of considerations for the strain development and fermentation contribute to improving microbial strain's production performance (red), whereas those for the separation and purification help in reducing overall operation costs by facilitating the downstream process (blue). Some of the considerations can be repeated in the course of systems metabolic engineering.
2015.10.19 View 9819 -
KAIST Agrees to Personnel Exchange with the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China
A delegation from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) of the Republic of China (ROC) visited KAIST on October 16, 2015.
President Steve Kang of KAIST and Director General Yu-Ping Lien of the Department of Investment Services, MOEA, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on exchanging personnel, recruiting and attracting top talents, and sharing job information.
With the MOU, KAIST and MOEA will develop a mobility program for students in Korea and ROC to help them seek employment opportunities in both nations. Director General Lien hoped that the MOU would bring more of KAIST students in the information technology field to work in ROC.
President Kang responded,
“KAIST has fostered highly talented engineers and researchers across all fields of science and engineering. If these students can have a place in ROC to realize their potential, this certainly could benefit the two nations.”
In the picture from left to right is Director General Yu-Ping Lien of the Department of Investment Services, the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China and President Steve Kang of KAIST.
2015.10.17 View 4900 -
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 8020 -
Brain Cognitive Engineering Experts from Korea and Abroad Gather at KAIST
The symposium presents recent and future research trends in brain and cognitive engineering.
KAIST hosted the Brain Cognitive Engineering Symposium on September 24, 2015, at the Dream Hall of the Chung Moon Soul building on campus. Around 100 experts in the field of neuroscience participated.
Organized by the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST, the symposium celebrated the establishment of the Brain Cognitive Engineering Program at the university and examined the recent research trends in neuroscience.
Six neuroscience experts presented their research and held discussions.
Professor Paul M. Thompson of the University of Southern California (USC), a renowned scientist in neurology imaging genetics, gave a speech entitled “The ENIGMA Project: Mapping Disease and Genetic Effects on the Human Brain in 30,000 People Worldwide.”
Professor Jae-seung Jeong of KAIST’s Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, Director Sung-Gi Kim of IBS Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Professor Sung-Hwan Lee of Korea University’s Department of Brain Engineering, Professor Cheil-Moon of DGIST’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, and Professor Jun-Tani of KAIST’s Department of Electrical Engineering also participated in the symposium.
Participants discussed the most recent findings in the field of brain science such as the education and research trends of brain cognitive engineering, trends of the world’s brain integrated science, the prospects of brain cognitive engineering program, brain activities that induce blood flow and fMRI, activity production in the brain cortex model as well as the development of functional hierarchy for the motor visual perception, and the neurorobotics research.
Professor Jeong said that “this symposium is a place for examination of the most recent research findings in the field of neuroscience as well as for discussion of its education,”and that “it would be an important opportunity for learning research on brain’s basic mechanisms as well as its applications.”
2015.09.25 View 7705 -
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 9851 -
KAIST and Chongqing University of Technology in China Open an International Program
With the help of KAIST, Chongqing University of Technology (CQUT) in China established an electrical engineering and computer science program and admitted their first 66 freshmen this fall semester.
The joint program was created to foster skilled engineers in the fields of electrical engineering and computer science, which are necessary for the development of the Korean and Chinese Industrial Complex located in Chongqing City.
KAIST has provided CQUT with a majority of the program’s curricula currently offered to its students in Daejeon, Korea.
Under the jointly administered program, KAIST takes on education and research while CQUT is responsible for student selection and administration.
KAIST has dispatched eight professors to teach the related fields in English, and 17 CQUT professors will teach the rest of the curricula.
In August 2014, KAIST and CQUT singed a cooperation agreement for education and research exchange and created the CQUT-KAIST Education Cooperation Center, which is headed by Professor Young-Nam Han of the Electrical Engineering Department at KAIST.
The two universities will expand their collaboration to include graduate programs by 2016.
In the picture below, President Steve Kang of KAIST (right) shakes hands with President Shi Xiaohui of Chongqing University of Technology (left).
2015.09.17 View 8676 -
KAIST Participates in the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015 in China
KAIST’s president and its professors actively engage in discussions of major issues on higher education, technology innovation, and industry-university collaboration with global leaders from across all sectors.
President Steve Kang of KAIST participated in the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015 (a.k.a., Summer Davos Forum) hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). With the theme of “Charting a New Course for Growth,” the Summer Davos Forum took place on September 9-11, 2015 in, Dalian, China.
Currently, KAIST is a member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) of WEF, a gathering of the presidents of the top 25 universities in the world, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Tokyo, University of Oxford, Peking University, and National University of Singapore. GULF allows university leaders an opportunity to have high-level dialogues on higher education and research and explore prospects for cooperative ventures.
President Kang led the discussion of the GULF session at the Summer Davos Forum, which was held on September 10, 2015, with 25 university leaders as well as two business leaders from Chinese companies: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., and Sanofi China. The participants shared candid perspectives on industry-university collaboration, particularly the need for such partnerships in Asia.
In addition, KAIST hosted the fourth IdeasLab session, entitled “Bio versus Nano Materials, on September 9, 2015. At the session, four KAIST professors held an in-depth debate and discussion with the audience on whether the next industrial revolution would be driven by advances in biomaterials or nanomaterials.
The topics under discussion were:
- New materials that mimic biology by Professor Hea Shin Lee
- Bio-based materials that replace petroleum-based materials by Professor Sang Yup Lee
- New materials designed at sub-nano scale by Professor Hee Tae Jung
- A hydrogen economy with nanomaterials by Professor Eun Ae Cho
Since its establishment in 2007, the Summer Davos Forum has become the biggest business and political gathering in Asia, held annually either in Dalian or Tianjin, China. The Forum has attracted more than 1,500 participants primarily from emerging nations such as China, India, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil, and has offered an open platform to address issues important to the region and the global community.
2015.09.14 View 7508 -
Professor Jeong Ho Lee Receives the 2015 Pediatric Epilepsies Research Award
The award identifies leading scientists worldwide and funds their cutting-edge research in epilepsy.
The Citizen United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) announced on September 7, 2015, that Jeong Ho Lee, a professor of the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering at KAIST, will be awarded the 2015 Pediatric Epilepsies Research Award.
The Pediatric Epilepsies Research Award is given annually to a researcher who has conducted novel, innovative research projects that address severe, intractable pediatric epilepsies as well as collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that explore new approaches to find a treatment for pediatric epilepsies.
Lee was recognized for his leading study in the field of intractable epilepsy. He is the first Korean who has ever received this award, securing a research grant of USD 250,000 for two years.
Lee has conducted research on brain somatic mutations as the novel cause of childhood intractable epilepsy. Pediatric epilepsies account for approximately 70% of all cases of epilepsy.
Established in 1998, CURE is a non-profit American organization based in Chicago, Illinois, which is committed to funding research and various initiatives that will lead to breakthroughs to cure epilepsy.
Since its inception, CURE has been at the forefront of epilepsy research, raising more than USD 32 million to support researchers and scientists worldwide. It has also awarded more than 180 cutting-edge projects in 13 countries.
2015.09.09 View 10298