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KAIST's Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy Names Recipients of Science Journalism Awards
The Science Journalism Masters Program of the Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy at KAIST named the winners of the 2015 Science Journalism Awards on October 17, 2015. The award ceremony took place at KAIST’s Seoul campus.
The awards were created in 2011 to recognize exemplary journalism that has contributed to the advancement of science and technology in Korea.
This year, the Korean Broadcasting System’s science show called the “Jang Yeong-Sil Show” received the Grand Prize. Yeong-Sil Jang was a Korean scientist and astronomer during the Joseon Dynasty in the 14th century.
A television documentary on challenges facing farm-raised chickens, which was produced by the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation in Jeonju City, won the TV Award, while news coverage by Dong-A Daily on the outbreak of the Middle East respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Korea received the Print Award.
After the award ceremony, students and professors of the Science Journalism Program hosted a conference to review and discuss major issues covered by the news media in the past year.
2015.10.15 View 7173 -
KAIST Teams Up with Korean Universities for MOOCs
KAIST, Seoul National University (SNU), and the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) agreed to cooperate in the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for Korean viewers. The agreement ceremony took place at the SNU campus on October 14, 2015.
Under the agreement, professors from all three universities will jointly create and implement online courses on science and engineering by the summer of 2016. The MOOCs will largely consist of basic courses on physics, chemistry, life science, mechanical engineering, and material science. Anyone from a high school student to an adult who is interested in science can take these online courses.
Some of the participating professors will be President Doh-Yeon Kim of POSTECH, Dean Seong-Keun Kim of Natural Sciences College at SNU, Dean Kun-Woo Lee of Engineering College at SNU, Dean Jung-Hoe Kim of Life Science and Bioengineering College at KAIST, Dean Do-Kyung Kim of Academic Affairs at KAIST, Dean Kun-Hong Lee of Engineering College at POSTECH, and Dean Joon-Won Park of Science College at POSTECH.
President Steve Kang of KAIST said,
“Many of Korea’s most distinguished professors in science and engineering will participate in the MOOCs. People, particularly young students aspiring to study science and technology at universities, should definitely take advantage of this opportunity.”
In the picture from left to right is President Steve Kang of KAIST, President Nak-In Sung of Seoul National University, and President Doh-Yeon Kim of Pohang University of Science and Technology.
2015.10.14 View 7970 -
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 9840 -
Professor Junehwa Song Appointed as the General Chair of the Organizing Committee of ACM SenSys
Professor Junehwa Song from the Schooling of Computing at KAIST has been appointed the general chair of the organizing committee of ACM SenSys—the American Computing Machine (ACM) Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems.
ACM SenSys held its first conference in 2003 to promote research on wireless sensor networks and embedded systems. Since then, it has expanded into an influential international conference especially with the increasing importance in sensor technologies. Recently the committee has expanded its field of interest to mobile sensors, the Internet of Things, smart device system, and security.
Professor Song is considered a world-renown researcher in mobile and ubiquitous computing system. He presented numerous research papers at various conferences organized by ACM. He is also a member of the editorial committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Mobile Computing journal. For his achievements in the field and flair for coordinating and planning conferences, he is now the first Korean researcher to be appointed the chair of ACM SenSys.
Professor Song said that, as the chair, he would help discover new technology in and applications of networked, wireless sensors that would meet the demands of our modern society.
The 13th ACM SenSys will take place in Seoul—the first one to be held in Asia. The event will begin on November 1, 2015 and last four days. More information about this year’s event can be found at http://sensys.acm.org/2015/.
2015.10.02 View 7918 -
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 11012 -
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 10907 -
Professor Woontack Woo Demonstrates an Optical Platform Technology for Augmented Reality at Smart Cloud Show
Professor Woontack Woo of the Graduate School of Culture Technology at KAIST participated in the Smart Cloud Show, a technology exhibition, hosted by the university’s Augmented Human Research Center and presented the latest development of his research, an optical platform system for augmented reality.
This event took place on September 16-17, 2015 at Grand Seoul Nine Tree Convention Center in Seoul.
At the event, Professor Woo introduced a smart glass with an embedded augmented reality system, which permits remote collaboration between an avatar and the user’s hand.
The previous remote collaboration was difficult for ordinary users to employ because of its two-dimensional screen and complicated virtual reality system.
However, with the new technology, the camera attached to artificial reality (AR) glasses recognizes the user’s hand and tracks it down to collaborate. The avatar in the virtual space and the user’s hand interact in real space and time.
The key to this technology is the stable, real-time hand-tracking technique that allows the detection of the hand’s locations and the recognition of finger movements even in situations of self-occlusion.
Through this method, a user can touch and manipulate augmented contents as if they were real-life objects, thereby collaborating remotely with another user who is physically distant by linking his or her movements with an avatar.
If this technology is adopted widely, it may bring some economic benefits such as increased productivity due to lower costs for mobility and reduction in social overhead costs from the decrease in the need of traveling long distance.
Professor Woo said, “This technology will provide us with a greater opportunity for collaboration, not necessarily restricted to physical travelling, which can be widely used in the fields of medicine, education, entertainment, and tourism.”
Professor Woo plans to present his research results on hand-movement tracking and detection at the 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2015), to be held on October 28-30, 2015, at Kintex in Goyang, Korea.
He will also present a research paper on remote collaboration at the ICAT-EGVE 2015 conference, the merger of the 25th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (ICAT 2015) and the 20th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (EGVE 2015), which will take place on October 28-30, 2015 at the Kyoto International Community House, Kyoto, Japan.
2015.09.16 View 9311 -
KAIST's Student Job Fair 2015
KAIST’s Undergraduate Student Council and Graduate Student Council jointly hosted the 2015 KAIST Job Fair on September 2-3, 2015 at the Sports Complex on campus.
The Job Fair took place for the sixth time this year. Forty-three companies, including some of the largest ones in Korea such as Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK Construction, Hankook Tires, as well as those owned by KAIST graduates, have participated.
The Job Fair specialized in three fields: information technology (IT) and electronic and mechanical engineering. The event included one-to-one employment counseling between human resources managers and students, mock interviews, employment orientations, job consulting, interview makeup lessons, resume writing and photo-shooting, etc.
The international students who attended the event received information packages on employment from the participating companies.
This event was open not only to KAIST students but also to students from other universities in the local community, offering more job opportunities to a wider range of people.
Last year alone, a total of 1,200 people including KAIST students and graduates joined the KAIST’s Job Fair.
2015.09.04 View 6624 -
KAIST's Research Team Receives the Best Paper Award from the IEEE Transaction on Power Electronics
A research team led by Professor Chun T. Rim of the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has received the First Prize Papers Award from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL), a peer-reviewed journal that covers fundamental technologies used in the control and conversion of electric power.
A total of three research papers received this award in 2015.
Each year, TPEL’s editors select three best papers among those published in the journal during the preceding calendar year. In 2014, the TPEL published 579 papers. Professor Rim’s paper was picked out as one of the three papers published last year for the First Prize Papers Award.
Entitled “Generalized Active EMF (electromagnetic field) Cancel Methods for Wireless Electric Vehicles (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6684288&tag=1),” the paper proposed, for the first time in the world, three generalized design methods for cancelling the total EMF generated from wireless electric vehicles. This technology, researchers said, can be applied to any wireless power transfer systems.
The award ceremony will be held at the upcoming conference of the 2015 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo in September in Montreal, Canada.
2015.08.27 View 10923 -
Nature Biotechnology Nominates Sang Yup Lee of KAIST for Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014
Nature Biotechnology, recognized as the most prestigious journal in the field of biotechnology, has released today its list of the Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2014. Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ranked seventh in the list. He is the only Asian researcher listed.
The journal, in partnership with IP Checkups, a patent analytics firm, presents an annual ranking of researchers based on their paper and patent output. The list includes, among others, each researcher’s most-cited patent in the past five years and their H index, a measurement to evaluate the impact of a researcher’s published work utilizing citation analysis. (More details can be found at http://www.nature.com/bioent/2015/150801/full/bioe.2015.9.html.)
American institutions made up the majority of the list, with 18 universities and research institutes, and the remainder was filled by KAIST in Korea and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia.
Globally known as a leading researcher in systems metabolic engineering, Professor Lee has published more than 500 journal papers and 580 patents. He has received many awards, including the Citation Classic Award, Elmer Gaden Award, Merck Metabolic Engineering Award, ACS Marvin Johnson Award, SIMB Charles Thom Award, POSCO TJ Park Prize, Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award, and the Ho Am Prize in Engineering.
2015.08.27 View 10807 -
Dr. Hyundoo Hwang Receives a Tenured Position at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education
Hyundoo Hwang, a former graduate student in the Department of Bio & Brain Engineering at KAIST, has been granted a tenured position at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITSEM), Mexico.
Dr. Hwang received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree at KAIST and started his professorship at Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology (UNIST) in Korea. He continued his research in the United States as a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been acknowledged for the development of an advanced nanotechnology for the diagnosis of rare diseases and research in cell signals. He is one of the leading researchers in an international research project in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) with participation by researchers from over ten countries. He has been active in commercializing biosensor technology in the U.S. and Mexico.
Since its establishment in 1943, ITSEM has grown to 33 campuses in 25 cities in Mexico. It is the largest university in Latin America with over 90,000 students (47% of its graduate students has oversea research experience). It recruits over 5,000 international students and professors every year.
Dr. Hwang will begin teaching at ITSEM as a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (Ingeniería Biomédica) this fall. He will also conduct research in nano- and micro-technology as a member of Sensors and Devices research group.
Professor Gwang Hyun Cho, head of KAIST's Department of Bio and Brain Engineering said that Dr. Hwang’s tenure professorship at ITSEM demonstrated that the academic program at KAIST—from undergraduate to doctoral—was on par with the international standard. He hoped that more talents from the department would seek academic careers in internationally renowned universities around the world.
2015.08.13 View 7077 -
Professor Sang-Min Bae Receives the 2015 Red Dot Design Award
Professor Sang-Min Bae and his research team from the Industrial Design Department of KAIST have received three awards from the 2015 Red Dot Design Award: the Best of the Best Award and two Design Concept Awards.
Being one of the most prestigious international design awards, the Red Dot Design Award serves to identify good design concept and innovation that will be the precursors of tomorrow’s great product. Its annual award ceremony will take place on September 25, 2015, at the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore.
This year, the Award received 4,680 entries from 61 countries, and only the top 5.7% of them was able to garner the awards. In addition to two Red Dot Design Concept Awards, Professor Bae’s team won the Best of the Best Award, coming through a four hundred to one competition.
Awarded the Best of the Best Award, Boxchool is a modular classroom built on shipping containers whose aim is to give underprivileged children equal opportunities for learning. Jointly designed with an IT corporation in Korea, SK Telecom, the container is also a smart classroom.
Boxchool received the Best of the Best Award in recognition of its contribution to giving an equal learning opportunity to needy children, as well as its environmental characteristics.
The research team strengthened the mobility of the container and creatively addressed problems associated with using containers as classrooms such as insulation and inadequate space in environments which hamper teaching. The modular classroom can function in any setting since it can generate electricity from installed solar panels. The rainwater utilization system allows autonomous operation of the classroom.
The team earned the Red Dot Design Concept Award for a self-generating interactive tent, which was jointly designed with Kolon Sport, a Korean outdoor products company, as an industry-university cooperation project. The interactive tent differs from conventional tents by adding features that allow users to engage with the environment. For example, the installed organic solar cells allowed users to have prolonged outdoor activities by supplying electricity generated therefrom. Users can also enjoy greater ventilation. This permits the tent to be utilized as a temporary residence in the third world.
Another recipient of the Red Dot Design Concept Award, Snow Energy is a portable self-generating lamp and charger, which contains a thermo-element, generating electricity from temperature difference. Electricity is generated by pouring hot water inside a tank and cold water into a neighboring space. Snow Energy, which is sustainable and eco-friendly, will be especially helpful during outdoor activities when there is no electricity available.
Professor Bae's research team, ID+IM, has endeavored to address inequality and philanthropy through two projects, the Nanum (a Korean word to mean “sharing”) and the Seed Projects. Since 2005, they have received internationally recognized awards more than 40 times.
Picture 1: Recipient of the Best of the Best Award of the 2015 Red Dot Design Award, Boxchool is a modular classroom built on shipping containers
Picture 2: Recipient of the 2015 Red Dot Design Concept Award, the self-generating interactive tent
Picture 3: Recipient of the 2015 Red Dot Design Concept Award, Snow Energy is a portable self-generating lamp and charger which generates electricity from the temperature difference
2015.08.05 View 11549