Campus/People
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Prof. Sang-Ouk Kim Featured on the Cover of Emerging Investigator Special Issue
KAIST Prof. Sang-Ouk Kim of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering was featured on the cover of the Emerging Investigator Special Issue published by Britain"s Royal Society of Chemistry on June 21, university authorities said on Monday (June 22).
The special issue shed spotlight on 18 up-and-coming scientists who have been selected through the recommendation and rigorous screening process of the editorial and advisory boards of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The 18 scientists consist of six from the American continent, 10 from Europe, one from Japan and one from Korea.
The journal introduced Prof. Kim"s paper, titled "Highly entangled carbon nanotube (CNT) scaffolds by self-organized aqueous droplets." Kim explained in the paper that the cellular CNT demonstrated high electrical conductivity and field-emission properties, which is potentially useful for various applications in electronics and energy storage devices.
2009.06.24 View 13706 -
U.S. and Korean Researchers Unveil Newest Research Team Member: Jaemi the Humanoid
- Project aims to enable humanoids to interact with people and their environment
June 1, 2009-- A Drexel University-led research team late last week unveiled the newest, most central member of its collaboration with a team of Korean researchers: Jaemi, a humanoid (HUBO). Jaemi HUBO embodies efforts to advance humanoid development and enhance the concept of human-robotic interaction. The project"s goal is to enable humanoids to interact with their environment, and enhancement plans include enabling the humanoid to move over rugged terrain, in unstructured environments and to interact socially with humans and handle objects.
The five-year project, funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) program, seeks transformative models to catalyze discovery through international research collaboration and train U.S. students and junior researchers to effectively think and work in global teams.
"The field of robotics is among the top 10 technology areas considered engines for economic growth. Korea understands this and is aggressively pursuing robotics. To stay competitive, the U.S. must do the same," said Mark Suskin, acting deputy director of NSF"s Office of International Science and Engineering. "NSF"s PIRE program and this robotics collaboration in particular, enable the U.S. to capitalize on research in other countries and remain competitive."
The PIRE research team is composed of researchers at The University of Pennsylvania, Colby College, Bryn Mawr College and Virginia Tech in the United States; and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea University and Seoul National University in Korea.
The team obtained a version of KAIST"s HUBO humanoid, which it named Jaemi HUBO and decided to house it at Drexel University. KAIST HUBO lab has become a model of cutting advance humanoid research by relatively small teams working on tight budgets.
KAIST excels in humanoid leg and body design, biped gait (walking, running, kicking), balance (modeling and control system design), and hardware integration. U.S. robotics researchers tend to enjoy an edge in locomotion over rugged, unstructured terrain; manipulation/grasping; cognition, perception and human-robot interaction; and vision (image, understanding, navigation).
This collaboration of American and Korean researchers will seek to draw on the expertise of each researcher and take Jaemi HUBO to the next level of development--that is, to improve Jaemi"s capabilities to navigate and manipulate objects and interact with people in unstructured environments. Such capabilities demand information technologies like cognition, perception and networking areas. Targeted enhancement features include a capability to move over rugged terrain and in unstructured environments and to handle objects and interact socially with humans.
Jaemi HUBO will also educate the American public, particularly young people, about the science of robotics. This education process began at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia on May 28, 2009, when Jaemi HUBO was unveiled and introduced to a crowded audience of children and a few adults. Neither male nor female,Jaemi connected with the children, boys and girls alike. Guided by a Drexel University graduate student, Jamei moved, spoke, danced, shook hands and lead the children in a game of Simon Says. Such access to Jaemi HUBO starkly contrasts with that afforded by other high-profile humanoids that are often protected trade secrets, largely inaccessible to the public.
Museum curators are pleased to have had Jaemi visit and entertain kids during the weekend. "At the Please Touch Museum, we promote learning through a variety of senses," said J. Willard Whitson,the museum"s vice president for exhibits and education. "A humanoid not only embodies our goal of building layers of knowledge in young people, but Jaemi helps all of us celebrate the playful side of technology."
Jaemi HUBO is now at its permanent home at Drexel University, from which travel and guest appearances may be arranged by appointment. Journalists interested in meeting and interviewing Jaemi HUBO and other research team members are encouraged to contact Lisa-Joy Zgorski at lisajoy@nsf.gov. (Press Release of U.S. National Science Foundation)
2009.06.19 View 15498 -
Prof. Cho's Team Awarded Best Paper Prize by IEEE
A team led by Prof. Seong-Hwan Cho of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST, won the 2009 Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award for their paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Journal last May, university authorities said on Thursday (June 4).
The team"s paper was entitled "A Time-based Bandpass ADC Using Time-Interleaved Voltage-Controlled Oscillators." The prize is given to a paper regarded as the best among about 350 papers published in the prestigious journal in the circuit theory area. Co-recipients of the award are Young-Gyu Yoon, Jae-Wook Kim and Tae-Kwang Jang. The award was presented at the annual 2009 International Symposium for Circuits and Systems in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 26.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. The New York-based organization has more than 365,000 members in about 150 countries making it the largest technical professional organization in the world.
2009.06.05 View 14476 -
KAIST Appoints Two CEOs for Promotion of Innovative Projects
KAIST has appointed chief executive officers (CEO) for the two companies KAIST has recently established to carry out two innovative "low-carbon, green growth projects" supported by the Korean government, university authorities said on Monday (June 2).
Chung-Sung Ahn, a former executive of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., a top shipbuilder of the world, was appointed as the CEO of the Mobile Harbor Co., and Chung-Koo Lee, a former president of Hyundai Motor Co., as CEO of the On-Line Electric Car Co.
The two companies have been newly established for the commercial operation of the mobile harbor and on-line electric car projects that KAIST has been working on.
KAIST has developed a plan to power electric cars through re-charging strips embedded in roadways. The university has built a prototype on its campus for electric-powered golf carts and worked on designs that would power cars and buses.
The mobile harbor system is motivated by a growing need for an innovative container transport service system to effectively meet continuing increase in global container shipping volume, KAIST has developed a system that can unload containers from a containership to a floating harbor in the sea and deliver them to a land terminal and load cargoes in a reverse way.
The 71-year-old Ahn of the Mobile Harbor Co. served as the president of the Offshore & Engineering Division and the Industrial Plant & Engineering Division of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. from 2003 to 2005. He completed Advanced Management Program (AMP) from Harvard Business School in 1990. Ahn obtained Ph.D. in ocean engineering from MIT in 1972, M.S. in naval architecture from MIT in 1969, M.S. in meteorology/oceanography from MIT in 1967 and B.S. in Maritime Science from Korea Maritime University in 1959.
Chung-Koo Lee, 64, served as president of Hyundai Motor Co. from 1992 to 2002 and as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology from 2001 to 2003.
2009.06.05 View 12211 -
KAIST Senior Wins Prizes at International Design Contests
Sung-Joon Kim, a senior at the Department of Industrial Design, KAIST, has recently won the highest prize at the iF Communication Design Award held in Hanover, Germany, university officials said on Monday (June 3).
The prizewinning work entitled "1/2 PROJECT" introduces a donation system in which a customer buys a bottle of drink, for example, containing only a half of its price value and donate the remaining half of the value. The work which was created as part of the Samsung Design Membership was also awarded a silver prize at the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) of the United States.
Award ceremonies of the two prizes are scheduled for in Muenchen in August and in Miami in September, respectively.
"The design project is aimed at making donation a part of everyday life by teaming up with big-name beverage makers," said Kim.
iF Communication Design Award and the IDEA are among the world"s three leading international design competitions. The other one is the Red Dot Design Award presented in Essen, Germany.
Early this year, Kim, leading a team, presented a portable life saving equipment called "Rescue Stick" to the two competitions and won high honors.
2009.06.05 View 14931 -
KAIST Signs Agreement for Industry-Academia Cooperation with KCC
KAIST signed an agreement for industry-academia cooperation with KCC, Korea"s leading supplier of building & industrial materials, on May 28, university sources said.
The agreement signed by KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh and Mong-Jin Chung, Chairman of the KCC Business Group, calls for KAIST and KCC to conduct joint research for the development of new technologies in nano science, new materials areas and interdisciplinary areas.
Under the agreement, KCC will invest 5 billion won into the KAIST Institute for the NanoCentury over the next five years.
KCC Chairman Chung said: "Through this industry-academia cooperation agreement, we are seeking to give part of our profits back to community . We hope this agreement to contribute to the development of core technologies of the future in the new materials field, and nurturing specialized manpower."
2009.05.28 View 13859 -
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 10300 -
Five Prominent Figures Appointed as KAIST Admission Officers
KAIST appointed five celebrated figures including Seung Park, former Bank of Korea governor, as admission officers on May 15, university authorities said on Thursday (May 14).
The four others are Moon-Soul Chung, founder and former CEO of Mirae Corp., who is well known as the first-generation venture entrepreneur in Korea; In-ho Lee, former Korean ambassador to Russia; Myung-ja Kim, former minister of environment; and former KAIST President Chang-sun Hong who was a National Assemblyman.
Their appointment is designed to guarantee transparency and fairness in a new undergraduate admission system. KAIST has decided to select. 150 freshmen from among 1,000 students recommended by the principals of as many general high schools across the country. The five special admission officers will participate in interviewing the recommended students. The new screening system which is introduced to broaden the field of applicants to graduates from schools other than science high schools will be implemented from the next school year.
The newly appointed admission officers will have orientation sessions on May 28-29 and then visit high schools nationwide to interview the recommended students in June and July.
KAIST set off a new trend in the admission process when President Nam-Pyo Suh announced in March that 150 students, or about 16 percent of the freshmen enrollment, would be recruited from regular high schools solely on the basis of their principals" recommendation and interview results in March.
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. Unveiling the new admission plan, President Suh said, "We expect the principals to recommend students with special talents or potential rather than high grades."
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.
The socially respected admission officers will single out 300 from among the 1,000 recommended students for further review. Out of the 300, the final 150 students will be chosen through in-depth interviews by KAIST professors.
"Through years of receiving principal"s recommendations and judging the academic records of the recommended students at KAIST, we can accumulate a database on high schools nationwide. If a student from a certain high school turns out to be no good, we might not pick any more student from that school," 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. Ten percent of the 150 additional openings for regular high school graduates will be alloted to students from rural areas and another 10 percent to low-income households.
"A certain 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, it wil help improve the education environment in this country," Suh said.
2009.05.22 View 12861 -
International News Outlets Report on KAIST's On-Line Electric Vehicle Project
International news agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters have recently reported on the "online" electric vehicle project KAIST is proceeding with. A number of newspapers abroad including the New York Times and the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong published the articles. Following are excerpts from those reports.
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S. Koreans designing "online" electric vehicles
By JEAN H. LEE
Associated Press
Urban visionaries in London and Seoul, two of the world"s busiest capital cities, foresee buses gliding through their streets with speed, ease and efficiency _ without emitting the exhaust fumes that scientists say are contributing to global warming.Under Mayor Boris Johnson"s vision, London"s iconic red double-decker Routemaster buses would be back on the streets _ but powered by electricity, not gasoline.
Engineers at South Korea"s top-ranked KAIST university are meanwhile working on a novel prototype for an electric vehicle system: one that provides power on the go through induction strips laid into the roadway.
Cities _ which house 75 percent of the world"s population and generate 80 percent of its pollution _ must take leadership in tackling the problem of polluting emissions, Johnson said Monday in Seoul on the eve of the third C40 Large Cities Climate Summit.
"I think as a collective of cities, what we should be doing here in Seoul is agreeing that we are going to stop the endless addiction of mankind to the internal combustion engine," he told reporters. "It"s time that we moved away from fossil fuels. It"s time that we went for low-carbon vehicles."
"Cars form many problems that we see in Korea as well as other countries. We use hydrocarbon organic fuels, mostly petroleum, and that, in turn, creates environmental problems _ and Seoul is notorious," said Suh Nam-pyo, president of KAIST in Daejeon, south of the South Korean capital.
Seoul, population 10 million, is getting warmer three times faster than the world average, the National Meteorological Administration said Monday.
The obvious solution, Suh said, is to "replace all these vehicles with vehicles that do not pollute the air and do not use oil."
Back in March, Johnson zipped down a British highway in a U.S.-made electric car that he wrote marked "the beginning of a long-overdue revolution."
He rhapsodized in a Telegraph newspaper editorial that the Tesla has no exhaust pipe, carburetor or fuel tank, and "while every other car on that motorway was a-parping and a-puttering, filling the air with fumes and particulates, this car was producing no more noxious vapours than a dandelion in an alpine meadow."
Last month, he launched an ambitious plan to get 100,000 electric cars onto the streets of London by 2015. He pushed for the creation of 25,000 charging stations and vowed to convert some 1,000 city vehicles to make London the "electric car capital of Europe."
"The age of the diesel-emitting bus has got to be over in London," Johnson said.
And scientists are still grappling with the massive, sensitive, costly and fast-depleting batteries that take the place of international combustion engines and gasoline. Electric cars run between 40 and 120 miles (60 to 200 kilometers) on one charge, and it takes anywhere from two to seven hours to fully recharge, said Christian Mueller of the IHS Global Insight consulting firm.
"Everybody is frantically working on coming up with a viable electric car," he said from Frankfurt, Germany.
Batteries "aren"t yet at a state where we can say they are cheap, they"re reliable and they"re easy to come by. They all still have their technical drawbacks," said Mueller, who specializes in electrics and electronics.
Suh, an MIT-trained inventor with some 60 international patents to his name, approached the challenge from another angle.
"Why not have power transmitted on the ground and pick it up without using mechanical contact?" he said in an interview in his office overlooking the staging grounds for the university"s electric cars.
KAIST"s "online" vehicles pick up power from trips, or inverters, embedded into the road rather than transmitted through rails or overhead wires. A small battery, one-fifth the size of the bulky batteries typically used, would give the vehicle enough power for another 50 miles (80 kilometers), said Cho Dong-ho, the scientist in charge of the project.
South Korea produces its own nuclear power, meaning it can produce a continuous supply of energy to fuel such a plan.
President Lee Myung-bak, whose government gave KAIST $50 million for two major projects, including the "online" electric vehicle, took a spin in February.
Online buses are running at the KAIST campus and will begin test runs soon on the resort island of Jeju.
But Seoul, which has promised to set aside $2 million for the underground charging system, is within Suh"s sights. He said 9,000 gasoline-fueled buses now crisscross the capital, with 1,000 going out of commission each year. He envisions replacing those aging buses with electric models. Initial test runs are expected to take place this year.
Mueller, the consultant, called it a creative approach with potential.
"It sounds very intriguing; you don"t store your energy, you provide it on the go." he said. "The (battery) storage problem is overcome instantly. That would be a very intriguing way of doing it."
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South Korea tries recharging road to power vehicles
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea"s top technology university has developed a plan to power electric cars through recharging strips embedded in roadways that use a technology to transfer energy found in some electric toothbrushes.
The plan, still in the experimental stage, calls for placing power strips about 20 cm (8 inches) to 90 cm (35 inches) wide and perhaps several hundred meters long built into the top of roads.
Vehicles with sensor-driven magnetic devices on their underside can suck up energy as they travel over the strips without coming into direct contact.
"If we place these strips on about 10 percent of roadways in a city, we could power electric vehicles," said Cho Dong-ho, the manager of the "online electric vehicle" plan at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
The university has built a prototype at its campus in Daejeon, about 140 km (90 miles) south of Seoul, for electric-powered golf carts and is working on designs that would power cars and buses.
The system that can charge several vehicles at once would allow electric cars and buses to cut down on their battery sizes or extend their ranges.
The non-contact transfer of electricity, also called inductive charging, works by magnets and cables on the underside of the vehicle making a connection with the current in the recharging strip to receive power as they travel over it.
It is employed in some brands of electric toothbrushes that are sealed and water resistant, which do not need to be plugged into anything but use a magnetic connection to receive energy while resting in a cradle.
The recharging strips, which are attached to small electrical stations, would be laid in places such as bus lanes and the roads running up to intersections so that vehicles could power up where traffic slows down, Cho said.
The system will be tested later this year for use in the bus systems of Seoul and other South Korea cities while some of the country"s automakers are also cooperating in the project.
Unlike electric lines used for trams, vehicles do not need to be in constant contact with the strips and a person can touch the lines without receiving a shock.
The system so far has proven safe to humans and machinery, Cho said.
The cost of installing the system is an estimated 400 million won ($318,000) per kilometer of road. Electricity is extra.
2009.05.21 View 16422
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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 12600
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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 12106 -
Monthly Chosun Publishes In-Depth Interview with KAIST President
Monthly Chosun Publishes In-Depth Interview with KAIST President
The Monthly Chosun published by Chosun Ilbo, one of the major newspapers in Korea, carried an in-depth interview with Nam-Pyo Suh, President of KAIST, in its April 2009 issue. Following is a translation of the article.
‘There’s No Good Golf Player among Famous MIT Professors’
By Kim Sung-dong and Lee Keun-pyung
Biographical Note: Born in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, in 1936. Moved to the United States in 1954. Graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earned M.S. from MIT, and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Served with MIT as professor of mechanical engineering and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Worked for four years as assistant director for engineering, the U.S. National Foundation of Science, from 1984. Appointed as president of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) in July 2006. Concurrently serves as director of the Presidential New Growth Engine Search Group. Dr. Suh has some 60 international patents to his name.
In Korea, KAIST President Suh Nam-pyo raised the torch of university reform. Since he took office at KAIST in July 2006, he initiated reform measures one after another. At the state-run university where all students were tuition-free, the new president required students to pay tuition in accordance with their academic records. For the faculty, he offered various incentives to stimulate competition and implemented a strict tenure screening system.
The waves of reform starting from KAIST spread to the whole university community in Korea. In 2007, he shocked the professors’ society by dropping 15, or more than a third of applicants, in tenure screening. The action broke the common concept of life employment in Korean universities.
This year, he rang an alarm bell to Korean society as a whole. For the 2010 academic year, the KAIST President announced an admission formula which denied any advantage of students who take the costly private teaching. KAIST will ask the principa1s of 1,000 high schools across the country to recommend one senior student each, select 300 from them through screening by admission officers, and finally admit 150 students or 16 to 18 of the total freshmen enrollment through meticulous interviews by professors.
He declared that the university from 2010 would not consider the scores from the nationwide mathematics and science tests, which have turned into a major item for university entrance screening. In-depth interview will be conducted in a way no one can prepare for it by taking courses at “hagwon” or private institutes. It was a bold measure to free students from the shackles of private teaching. Following the lead of KAIST, other universities decided to change their admission systems so that preparations at hagwon would be of little help in going to universities of choice.
The Monthly Chosun interviewed Dr. Suh on March 6, the day after KAIST announced its 2010 admission plan.
Monthly Chosun: The KAIST admission plan for 2010 that you announced yesterday can be the starting point of suppressing private teaching business in Korea.
Suh: It was a little too late. Private teaching is a big problem for the nation. It is a big problem that a half of the entire education cost in this nation goes to private teaching market.
MC: Many parents send their children overseas to escape from private teaching.
Suh: Recently I visited the University of Queensland of Australia. There I learned that some 7,000 Korean students were in the small university town. It was almost the same number as the entire KAIST enrollment. About 20 percent of University of Queensland students are from outside the country, giving the university a large income. Korean students form the largest group among the international students. They must have had many reasons to go there, but if the money spent on overseas study is used wisely here, the education environment in Korea would be greatly improved. Correcting such problems will take time.
MC: How long will it take to end private teaching in Korea?
Suh: Korea decides everything with examination. During the Joseon Kingdom, there was the Gwageo system, which is equivalent to the bureaucratic recruitment examination of today. Some pass the state test during the senior year at university, which means that they only prepared for the examination while attending university. Things will change, but it will take time. There are people who take advantage of the present situation.
We should judge the desirability of a present system by examining whether it fits the basic purpose of education. I can’t insist that the admission system we announced yesterday is the best, but at the moment it is the most desirable alternative. After 10 or 20 years when society will have changed, there may be different judgment.
MC: Do you mean KAIST’s 2010 admission plan is necessary for a change, even if not the best?
Suh: Yes. Without such an experiment, there will be no change. I should admit that it may be unreasonable to ask every high school to recommend just one student, although some schools are twice, three times bigger than others.
MC: Don’t you think gaps in the academic level between schools should be considered?
Suh: If we consider such factors too, the process will be too complicated. Anyway, we are to select 150 out of 1,000 and we are offering them chances which were absolutely unavailable in the past. We give them a chance and it is up to the students to be able to catch it or not. Opportunities should be offered equally to students from rural areas or from poor families.
MC: What about possible favoritism in the course of recommendation?
Suh: We may be cheated once but never again. If a high school principal fails to recommend a good student, it will leave a bad record in our database. At present, the database shows students from which science high school are doing well and those from which high school are negligent in study.
MC: You have database for science high schools and other special-purpose schools but not one for general high schools?
Suh: We will soon have the database for general high schools. We will be interviewing teachers too and the results will also be stored in the database. If recommended students from certain high schools prove unfit for study at KAIST, we will not accept students from those schools.
MC: You are not to give advantage to high scorers from nationwide mathematics and science contests. But we should recognize that such examinations stimulate students to study harder.
Suh: Science high schools in Korea maintain high standards of education. But everything deteriorates if it is left to go on in the same direction for a long time. Each system needs to be reviewed and corrected if any defect is found. The admission system we are going to implement will have to be corrected some time.
MC: What is the most desirable human character in your view as KAIST president?
Suh: People quite incorrectly believe that man learns everything from school. It is impossible because the world changes constantly and new knowledge is created in every minute. Education aims to produce persons who can identify problems, who can establish goals, who think and learn by themselves.
We at KAIST aim to produce the best people in the world of science and technology. When the best people lead, others follow. People who are accustomed to one-way teaching under professors can do well in the second position in a group but not as the leader. In the science and technology community, some people are able to identify problems and address them while some others do well only when they are put into a certain course of action. The Korean education system should try to produce more people of the former category. KAIST wants to find and educate this kind of people.
MC: You mean creative leaders?
Suh: Yes. There are fewer people who can lead than those who follow. KAIST attracts good students, has good facilities and good teachers, so we can produce creative leaders. In recruiting professors, we spot some attractive candidates whose resumes boast of degrees from prestigious universities and fine career experiences. But some are found unqualified through interviews. A good professor is one who can drive students to study by themselves with creative ideas of guidance. Finding such professors is not easy, but we are making progress.
MC: Have you found any drawbacks in screening students mainly through interviews?
Suh: Three professors interview 40 to 50 applicants in three days, 14 hours a day. By the afternoon of the third day, they are quite tired and find it extremely difficult to make a choice because students are mostly of high standards. Initially, they rather easily pick up the top group and the bottom group, and then they come to the hard phase of choosing from among those who are not much different from each other. It could be just a matter of luck sometimes.
MC: From your long teaching experience in the United States, what problems do you find in the examination systems in Korea?
Suh: When questions are difficult, they may have plural correct answers. The professor could have wanted to test how students think. In Korea, examiners demand testees to produce just one correct answer. There are many different ways to go to Busan from Seoul. We should teach students how to think by themselves. At KAIST, we teach freshmen students design as a compulsory course. In design class, students are given varied questions with varied answers and they are taught how to find good solutions. Perhaps, KAIST is the only university in the world that has the design course for freshmen.
MC: Design sounds like something related to fashion in search of beauty. What is the concept of design taught in KAIST?
Suh: Design was the first thing I did at KAIST for its reform. When I came to KAIST, I set the goal of making it the best S&T university in the world. I drew up nine action plans for the goal and each plan has various practical tasks. My colleagues at the university are each given a task and I oversee how they fulfill their responsibilities. As professors and staff members develop their own ways of performing their tasks, an operation system is designed at KAIST. It must be more or less same with the mass media. Who should do what task and assume responsibilities under what process, this is the system design.
MC: Then the national reconstruction project is a big design.
Suh: A nation needs a good design to be prosperous. The president should be a good designer.
MC: KAIST formally merged with the Information and Communications University (ICU) a few days ago. What is the expected effect of the merger of the two state-run universities?
Suh: The primary merit is that the merger created critical mass that provides the momentum for self-sustaining and further growth which requires certain size. In the area of information technology, KAIST has about 90 professors and ICU has 46 while our competitor universities have an IT faculty of 200 or so. We need some 50 more professors to be really competitive in the area of information technology. MIT has 100 professors in the faculty of biology while KAIST has a little more than 20. To improve the situation, I proposed to the Korea Research Institute of Biology and Bioengineering (KRIBB) which is located next to KAIST to conduct joint research. But there were people who opposed it, and I still don’t know why they opposed it.
MC: Was it a joint research, not merger that you proposed to the KRIBB?
Suh: At first, we proposed three options: merger, joint research and individual-level exchanges. But nothing happened despite the great advantage of adjoining locations. In the Daedeok Science Complex, there are too many small research institutes and critical mass is hard to achieve. They are so much specialized that only experts in the same field mingle among themselves and make little contact with people of other scientific fields. Without contact with outsiders, no great new ideas can be produced. I am not a mathematician, nor a physicist but a mechanical engineer. Yet, I believe when biologists and physicists collaborate with engineers, when they seek a fusion of their capabilities, better results can be achieved.
MC: Is it the reason why KAIST established the College of Cultural Science?
Suh: Yes. The idea is to put science and technology into culture and culture into science and technology. Some want to put science into culture while others insist that culture should be put into science and there is tension between the two opinions. But this kind of tension is a good thing because it is a creative tension which can produce good ideas.
MC: But the president should make a final decision.
Suh: I take part in the process but decision is to be made by professors and departments concerned. I am not an expert although I offer my own ideas.
MC: Do professors follow you when you make a point?
Suh: I don’t like people to follow me right away. The university will not do well if all professors just follow what the president says. I want professors to make a decision after considering my suggestion. KAIST has a department-centered operation system. Department chairs are the real boss. This system has resulted in tenured professors in their thirties and professors in their fifties without tenure.
MC: It is likely that the tenure screening has caused dissatisfactions from faculty members.
Suh: Yes. Whoever passed the tenure screening believe we have the best system and those who failed believe that the system is worst.
MC: President Lee Myung-bak attended the 2009 commencement ceremony. Have you had any opportunities to establish personal relationship?
Suh: No. I met him for the first time when he visited Daejeon as a presidential candidate. People here suggested that I discuss with him national investment in science and technology but I declined. There was too much pressure because KAIST budget would be directly affected, and the vice president made presentation.
I have met President Lee a few times through the National Science Commission. In conversations with the president, I found common thinking between us. He agreed to me when I spoke about developing electric cars and the mobile harbor, but officials at government ministries do not understand me.
MC: Did you accept the directorship of the New Growth Engine Search Group at the request of President Lee?
Suh: The Knowledge and Economy Ministry asked me to take the post. Through this public service, I have been acquainted with many people who have helped me a lot. I don’t know if I made any contribution to the Group but I am sure I benefited a lot from it.
MC: What contribution do you think KAIST can make to the development of new growth engine industry?
Suh: Most important is developing original technologies. Institutions like KAIST should be able to develop many original technologies that Korea can sell overseas. The mobile harbor and electric cars are very promising projects in this regard.
(The “mobile harbor” being developed by KAIST is a marine transportation system capable of loading and unloading cargo with a ship being at anchor in the sea far from the shore in a situation of congestion. Equipped with a self-propulsion apparatus and a loading/unloading system, the mobile harbor comes to ships far from the land to handle cargoes.)
MC: Is the mobile harbor project to receive government support?
Suh: We are trying to get government funding for it. Some in the government are in favor while some others are desperately against it for reasons that I don’t know.
MC: What about the “online electric car” KAIST developed?
Suh: It is a very important project which promises to resolve the problems of high energy cost and air pollution. It is most suitable for cities like Seoul but there are people who oppose its commercial production.
MC: President Lee had a test-riding in the online electric car, but government support has not been decided yet. Why?
Suh: I can’t understand it. We are seeing a project stalled by the rejection of some section chiefs even though the president endorsed it. These opponents are not scientists. Previously developed electric cars need big batteries while the KAIST model requires a small battery. I am confident that the better product always beats the worse one, the more efficient technology emerges as the winner at the end.
MC: When do you think can KAIST overtake MIT where you belonged?
Suh: Within 10 years, I believe. Let me tell you this. KAIST established the Department of Marine Systems this year, but MIT has abolished its marine systems department. They only taught how to build ships for a long time so students did not apply and the department has been merged with the mechanical engineering department. At KAIST, we teach mobile harbor as well as shipbuilding at the new marine systems department. We are behind in some areas but we are ahead in many others. I am sure we can overtake MIT in about 10 years.
MC: Are donations to the university made smoothly?
Suh: We received 70 billion won ($60 million) last year and we are optimistic about attaining the goal of 1 trillion won in donations.
MC: What is the most difficult problem in collecting donations?
Suh: It is not easy for a man of my age to go about asking people to donate money that they earned in hard way. But it has to be done to operate the university.
MC: You are said to be a Korean-born scientist closest to receiving the Nobel Prize.
Suh: I am not a scientist but an engineer and I not at all interested in the Nobel Prize or anything like that. If one endeavors to contribute to society with research, prizes come to him.
MC: How is the prospect of Korean scientists winning the Nobel Prize?
Suh: I am positive. There are many young professors in Korea who are engaged in very interesting research projects. But what is important is globalizing their research efforts, by competing and collaborating with top-notch scientists of the world.
MC: How do you compare the cultures and climates of academic communities in the United States and Korea?
Suh: Famous U.S. professors I know are real workaholics. They devote themselves to research and are interested in little else. A university develops when it has many such professors. I want to make a point that there are few avid golfers among famous professors at MIT. They have no time to spend on the golf course. I see many good golf players among professors in Korea.
MC: Do Korean professors cooperate well among themselves in research?
Suh: What I realized first upon returning to Korea was that professors rarely discuss their academic matters in private conversations. They discuss everything but their own research work. This was something I found different from what I had witnessed in the United States where professors openly exchange ideas about their academic fields. What we need in the academic society is opening our hearts about what we are working on and what we have achieved. New ideas evolve in the course of such interactions. I’m inspired these days as I find younger professors gradually show such attitudes.
MC: What was the most difficult part in your reform efforts at KAIST?
Suh: Persuading people was of course the most difficult part. I explained to professors the purpose of changing the existing system and tried to win their consent on the process to achieve our objectives. But I was not able to persuade them all. Perhaps about half must still believe that the past system is better. The common trait of people is that they judge something is good or bad based on whether they benefit from it or not.
MC: You went to the United States in the second year of high school in Seoul. Weren’t you hesitant to decide to come back to Korea after so many years?
Suh: It wasn’t an easy decision to pack up and come here. I had many things to do over there, which was the reason why I did not catch previous opportunities to return to Korea. Children and their education were big obstacles in the past. But this time I just made up my mind and now I realize that it was a good decision.
MC: Did you believe it was the last opportunity to serve your motherland?
Suh: It is too much to say so. I am trying a lot but I don’t know if I am of any help to the country.
2009.04.23 View 14298