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Prof. Chung Appointed Chief Design Officer of Seoul City
Prof. Kyung-Won Chung of the Department of Industrial Design, KAIST, has been appointed as the new chief design officer of the Seoul Metropolitan City, university sources said on Tuesday (May 26).
Chung succeeded Prof, Young-Gull Kwon of Seoul National University who served as the inaugural head of the design division since 2007. The deputy-mayor level position has a two-year term.
With a vision to turn Seoul into a "global design hub," the Seoul city administration established the design division and initiated a slew of initiatives including design competitions aimed at improving the city"s looks.
Prof. Chung graduated from Seoul National University and its graduate school. Then, he earned a master"s degree from Syracuse University, New York, and a doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. Since February 2009, he has served as an executive of the newly-created Seoul Design Foundation. He also served as president of the Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) from February 2000 through May 2003.
2009.05.28 View 9419 -
KAIST Ranked Seventh in Chosun-QS 2009 Asian University Rankings
- Major Criteria in Research, Education, Globalization
KAIST ranked top in Korea and seventh in Asia in a ranking compiled jointly by the Chosun Ilbo, a major Korean daily, and global university evaluation institute QS of Britain.
In the rankings released on Tuesday (May 12), KAIST scored 94.9 based on the full 100 of the top-ranking university, the University of Hong Kong. KAIST was closely followed by Seoul National University (SNU), which ranked 8th in the Asian ranking. KAIST outpaced SNU in terms of globalization, but lagged behind in terms of peer review and recruiters review.
The Chosun Ilbo said that KAIST achieved the distinction by encouraging competition among research professors, introducing competitive educational systems such as conducting all classes in English, and speeding up globalization drive based on a strong leadership of President Nam-Pyo Suh.
In an interview with the daily published on the same day, President Nam-Pyo Suh expressed enthusiasm for stepping up his university"s drive to make it one of the world"s leading research universities, without resting on its present reputation. "The goal of KAIST is to stand at the forefront in addressing critical problems facing the humanity in the 21st century. The problems include alternative energies and transportation and logistics. If we resolve these problems, KAIST will join the ranks of the world"s best universities," Suh said.
The evaluation, the only such survey in Asia, was conducted with 463 universities in 11 countries, including 106 in Korea. The universities were ranked for competitiveness in four categories -- research quality (60 percent), teaching quality (20 percent), graduate employability (10 percent) and international outlook (10 percent).
The top-ranked University of Hong Kong was followed by Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tokyo University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Osaka University.
The top 100 Asian universities include 17 Korean universities, 33 Japanese, 11 Chinese, seven Indian, six in Hong Kong and two in Singapore.
Universities were ranked through a quantitative analysis based on data submitted by the universities in March and a qualitative analysis based on the competitiveness of professors and graduates evaluated by about 3,100 academics and businesspeople around the world.
Meanwhile, KAIST was ranked 95th among top 200 universities of the world in the Times Higher Education-QS World University rankings in 2008. It ranked 34th in the area of engineering and information technology, and 46th in natural science.
2009.05.13 View 11380 -
Prof. Chong Unveils New Human Movement Model
A KAIST research team headed by Prof. Song Chong of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has developed a new statistical model that simulates human mobility patterns, mimicking the way people move over the course of a day, a month or longer, university sources said on Tuesday (May 12).
The model, developed in collaboration with scientists at North Carolina State University, is the first to represent the regular movement patterns of humans using statistical data.
The model has a variety of potential uses, ranging from land use planning to public health studies on epidemic disease.
The researchers gave global positioning system (GPS) devices to approximately 100 volunteers at five locations in the U.S. and South Korea and tracked the participants" movements over time. By tracing the points where the study participants stopped, and their movement trajectories, researchers were able to determine patterns of mobility behavior.
The researchers were then able to emulate these fundamental statistical properties of human mobility into a model that could be used to represent the regular daily movement of humans. The model, called Self-similar Least Action Walk (SLAW), will have a wide array of practical applications.
The research, "SLAW: A Mobility Model for Human Walks," was presented on April 20 at the 28th IEEE Conference on Computer Communications in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The National Science Foundation of the U.S. funded the research.
2009.05.13 View 12864 -
KAIST Professor Unveils New Method of Manufacturing Complex Nano-wire
A KAIST research team led by Prof. Sang-Ouk Kim of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has discovered a new nanowire manufacturing method, university sources said on Monday (May 11).
The KAIST researchers successfully demonstrated soft graphoepitaxy of block copolymer assembly as a facile, scalable nanolithography for highly ordered sub-30-nm scale features. Graphoepitaxy is a new technique that uses artificial surface relief structure to induce crystallographic orientation in thin films.
Various morphologies of hierarchical block copolymer assembly were achieved by means of disposable topographic confinement of photoresist pattern. Unlike usual graphoepitaxy, soft graphoepitaxy generates the functional nanostrutures of metal and semiconductor nanowire arrays without any trace of structure-directing topographic pattern.
The discovery was featured in the May 7 edition of Nano-Letters. Application has been made for the domestic patent of the new method.
The new method is expected to be advantageous for multi-layer overlay processing required for complex device architecture, the sources said.
2009.05.12 View 10042 -
KAIST, KHNP Sign MOU on Nuclear Technology Development
KAIST signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) on Wednesday (May 6) to upgrade cooperation between the two organizations in nuclear power technology development.
On hand at the signing ceremony at KAIST were KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh, KHNP President Jong-Shin Kim and other related officials.
The agreement calls for increased efficiency and synergy effect in the development of nuclear power generation by KAIST and KHNP to gain greater competitiveness in the exportation of nuclear power technologies.
KHNP is responsible for the operation of all nuclear and hydraulic power plants in Korea which supply about 40 percent of the nation"s electric power demand. It is the largest among the six power generating subsidiaries that separated from Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) in April 2001.
2009.05.07 View 10979 -
KAIST Prof. Park Selected as Winner of Clemson Award
Professor Tae-Gwan Park of the Department of Biological Sciences, KAIST, was chosen as the winner of the 2009 Clemson Award for Fundamental Research, university authorities said on Tuesday (April 7).
The award is the highest recognition of the Society for Biomaterials, an international organization of more than 3,000 members that promotes research in the field of biomaterials. Prof. Park is cited for his outstanding achievements in interdisciplinary research covering gene transferring, gene therapy and neogenesis. It is rare for a non-U.S. national to win the prize in the 36-year history of the award.
The award will be given to Professor Park at the Annual Meeting of the society which will be held in San Antonio, Texas, on April 22.
2009.04.09 View 11728 -
President Suh to Receive Honorary Doctorate from Romanian University
KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh will receive an honorary doctorate degree from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in a ceremony at the university on April 3, school authorities said.
Andrei Marga, rector of the largest Romanian university, said in a letter to President Suh that the university decided to award Suh the title of Doctor Honoris Cause of Babes-Bolyai University, the highest academic honor of the university, in recognition of his "prestigious actions as academic leader of a university known worldwide and for contribution to cooperation between Romania and South Korea."
The university"s honorary doctorate is awarded to persons with illustrious achievements in the fields of science, technology, art, philosophy, and theology. Recent winners of the honor include Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome; Nobel Prize winners Rich Ernest of Switzerland and George Palade of the United States; philosophers Paul Ricoeur of France and Richard Rorty of the United States, among others.
The Babes-Bolyai University located in Cluj-Napoca with about 50,000 students offers education in three different languages, Romanian, Hungarian and German. It has the longest academic history in Romania, founded as a Jesuit college in 1581.
2009.04.02 View 11504 -
KAIST Research Team Discovers Process for Rapid Growth of N-Doped CNT Arrays
A team of scientists led by Profs. Sang-Ouk Kim, Won-Jong Lee and Duck-Hyun Lee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has found a straightforward process for rapid growth of wall-number selected, nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays, university officials said on Monday (March 16).
KAIST researchers prepared highly uniform nanopatterned iron catalyst arrays by tilted deposition through block copolymer nanotemplates. This remarkably fast growth of highly uniform N-doped CNTs, whose material properties and chemical functionalizability are reinforced by N-doping, offers a new area of a large-scale nanofabrication, potentially useful for diverse nano-devices.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are of broad technical interest in electronics, photonics, energy devices, and other applications. However, establishing a straightforward process for mass production of uniform CNTs with desired structure and properties has been a long-standing challenge.
In particular, it was strongly desired to precisely control the numbers of walls and diameter of CNTs, which are decisive parameters for the physical properties of CNTs. In this respect, the preparation of monodisperse catalyst array having a narrow size distribution is generally considered an effective pathway to produce well-defined CNTs, since the number of walls and diameter of the produced CNTs are closely related to the catalyst size.
The finding was featured in the March 13 edition of Nano Letters, a leading journal in the nano technology field.
2009.03.20 View 13139
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Workshop on Biomedical IC to Be Held on March 26
KAIST will hold a workshop on "biomedical IC for future healthcare system" on March 26 at a lecture room of the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. The workshop is organized by SEECS and the Korean Institute of Next Generation Computing.
At the workshop, a variety of new technologies expected to expedite the development of biomedical systems will be presented. KAIST Prof. Hoi-Jun Yoo will speak on the "body channel communication" using the human body as the signal transmission medium and Dr. Seung-Hwan Kim of Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) on a wearable vital sign monitoring system.
Other subjects are CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) fully electronic biosensor for biomolecular detection to be presented by KAIST Prof. Gyu-Hyeong Cho; nerve interface and IC (integrated circuit) system design by KAIST Prof. Yoon-gi Nam; design of neural recording and stimulation IC using time-varying magnetic field by KAIST Prof. Seong-Hwan Cho; low power multi-core digital signal processor for hearing aid by Dong-Wook Kim, senior researcher at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology; and a non-contact cardiac sensor by KAIST Prof. Seung-Chul Hong.
With the advent of the ageing society, medical expenses of the elderly people are rapidly increasing. As a way to address the issue, interests are growing in "ubiquitous healthcare," a technology that uses a large number of environmental and patient sensors and actuators to monitor and improve patients’ physical and mental condition.
The upcoming workshop is the first academic event on biomedical integrated chips to be held in Korea. The workshop will provide a valuable opportunity for experts in biomedical area to get together and examine the present status of Korean biomedical area and discuss about its future, KAIST officials said.
2009.03.20 View 16601
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KAIST to Admit 150 Students Based on Recommendations
KAIST will select 150 students from regular high schools, excluding those from special purpose schools, on the basis of their principals" recommendations and interview results beginning in the next school year in an effort to diversify admissions, President Nam-Pyo Suh said on Thursday (March 5).
Award-winning records at math or science competitions will not be put into account in admissions to prevent after-school tutoring aimed at winning such contests.
President Suh unveiled the new admission plan at a news conference in Seoul. "We expect the principals to recommend students with special talents or potential rather than high grades," Suh said. Established under a special law in 1971, KAIST is given full liberty to recruit freshmen students in whatever method it deems right, without being required to use the scholastic ability test scores of applicants as the basic criteria.
KAIST plans to initially select 1,000 students across the country based on recommendations. Admission officers will single out 300 for further review. Out of the 300, the final 150 students will be chosen through in-depth interviews.
"Years of receiving principal recommendations would accumulate a database on high schools nationwide. If a student recommended by a principal turns out to be no good, we might not pick more students from that school," President Suh said.
Over 80 percent of students admitted to KAIST this year were graduates of elite institutions, mostly science high schools. Only 20 percent came from regular high schools. The 150 additional openings next year will be allotted to only those attending ordinary high school.
Ten percent of the 150 openings will be assigned to students from rural areas and another 10 percent will go to students from low-income households.
"One high school was not able to send even a single student to KAIST for the last 10 years. I"m sure there are talented students in that school. If we give the school a chance, the education system will be upgraded," President Suh said.
KAIST-affiliated Korea Science Academy, a Busan-based high school for gifted students, will also adopt similar admission policy of recruiting students solely on the basis on recommendation and interview results from 2011.
2009.03.10 View 11182 -
Prof. Song Develops Nano-Structure to Enhance Power of Rechargeable Lithium-ion Battery
A team of scientists led by Prof. Hyun-Joon Song of the Department of Chemistry, KAIST, developed a nano-structure that could increase the power of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, university sources said on Monday (Feb. 16).
The research team found that a nano-structured material using copper oxide (CuO) could produce lithium-ion batteries with some 50 percent more capacity than conventional products. The study was published in the online edition of peer-review journal Advanced Materials.
In rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, lithium ions move between the battery"s anode and cathode. The high-energy density of the batteries led to their common use in consumer electronics products, expecially portable devices. Their demand in automotive and aerospace applications is growing, and nano-structured, or nano-enabled batteries are emerging as the new generation of lithium-ion batteries for their edge in recharging time, capacity and battery life.
Graphite has been a popular material for cathodes in lithium-ion batteries. However, graphite cathodes are also blamed for lost capacity due to their consumption of lithium ions, which are linked to shorter battery life.
As such, scientists have been looking for materials that could replace graphite in cathodes, and silicon and metal oxide have been studied as possible alternatives.
2009.02.17 View 11251
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KAIST Wins First Prize at Recon Challenge of Int"l Magnetic Resonance Society
Professor Jong-chul Ye of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering and Hong Jeong, a doctorate student, won the first prize at the Recon Challenge held as part of a workshop sponsored by the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) held in Sedona, the United States.
The workshop took place under the theme of “data sampling and image reconstruction” on Jan. 25-28 in Sedona, Arizona, the United States. The KAIST team beat out major magnetic resonance imaging groups from the U.S. and Europe.
The Recon Challenge is a biennial competition highlighting different reconstruction strategies and metrics to compare them. ISMRM is an international, nonprofit, scientific association which promotes communication, research, development, and applications in the field of magnetic resonance in medicine and biology and other related topics.
At the competition, the KAIST team presented a new dynamic MRI algorithm called k-t FOCUSS that is optimal from a compressed sensing perspective. The main contribution of the method is extension of k-t FOCUSS to a more general framework with prediction and residual encoding. The prediction provides an initial estimate while the residual encoding takes care of the remaining residual signals.
2009.02.06 View 12827