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KAIST Hosts the 2016 IPFGRU
More than 120 senior representatives from 65 universities around the world will convene this month in Seoul to discuss the social responsibilities of higher education and strategic global partnerships among academia, research, and industry to advance socio-economic values.
Higher education as a driver of change to address the social and global challenges facing humanity in the 21st century has never been as important as it is today.
KAIST will raise the topic of higher education as a driver of social change, innovation, and entrepreneurship with the heads of global universities at its seventh international forum to be held on April 11-12, 2016 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seoul, the Republic of Korea.
The 2016 International Presidential Forum on Global Research Universities (IPFGRU) will bring over 120 presidents and vice presidents of 65 research universities and institutes from 36 nations together to discuss the theme of “Social Responsibilities of Higher Education and Strategic Global Partnership.”
Presidents Sung-Mo Kang of KAIST, Jacques Biot of École Polytechnique in France, and Peretz Lavie of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology will address the conference as plenary speakers.
President Kang will speak about KAIST’s initiatives to produce creative talents through student-centered education, entrepreneurship curricula, and the integration of humanities into cutting-edge research programs. His presentation, titled “The Fostering of Creative Talents and the Social Responsibility of Research Universities in the New Era,” introduces KAIST’s educational philosophy which can be represented as π. A broad range of understanding in basic disciplines (the horizontal line) is supported with one prong of in-depth knowledge in a chosen field and the other in entrepreneurial spirit.
KAIST graduates have demonstrated extraordinary leadership in research, academia, business, and public service. Nearly 25% of the research and development personnel at Samsung Electronics are KAIST Ph.D. holders. President Kang also describes KAIST’s latest endeavor to turn a university-led entrepreneurial activity into a stable business based on research outcomes and campus innovations. The K-School, a one-year master’s degree program on entrepreneurship and innovation, has just launched and is expecting to receive its first batch of students this fall. The K-School is envisioned to continue the university’s legacy as a major feeder for startups in Korea.
President Lavie will give a talk on “Fostering an Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Ecosystem in Israel,” in which he describes how the Technion-Israel Institute has become integral to the foundation of the nation’s I&E platform. Since its establishment in 1912, the university has become a key player in the growth of Israel’s industry, science, and technology while nurturing the majority of the nation’s top-notch researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Technion graduates have created more than 2,000 companies in Israel alone, generating 100,000 jobs and USD 30 billion through mergers and acquisitions.
President Biot will offer his insights into how the future of global research universities will be widely impacted by the emergence of disruptions triggered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In his speech entitled “How to Prepare Our Universities for the New Era of Industry 4.0,” he emphasizes that universities should take multi-disciplinary approaches to tackle societal challenges given the complexity of today’s problems ranging from climate change to energy crises, pandemic diseases, and poverty. He argues that universities should identify the needs of students in “Generation Z” who, from birth, have been heavily exposed to the Internet and digital technologies and, thus, universities should develop new educational systems (i.e., University 4.0.) to better prepare these students to cope with Industry 4.0.
The IPFGRU consists of presentations and discussions addressing the following sub-topics:
- Seeking a New Model of Research Universities in a New Era: This session will explore the role of research universities as both innovation drivers and growth engines in an age of robotics, globalization, and digitally-driven markets. In addition, speakers will discuss how to prepare universities for the Industry 4.0 era, and how multidisciplinary approaches and open innovations will play a large part in facilitating translational research and technology transfer.
- Shared Challenges and Responsibilities from a Global Perspective: Universities will share their strategies, policies, and practices to respond to critical issues facing local and global communities such as youth unemployment, the environment, energy, inequality, and entrepreneurship.
- Strategic Global Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Panelists will discuss how to build productive and sustainable partnerships that can generate synergies between education and research.
- Insights into Higher Education: Trends and Development: Participants will examine how universities can stay relevant in an increasingly competitive higher education sector and can assist students to better adapt to opportunities and challenges posed by the new industry of digital transformation and exponentially-growing technologies.
Sung-Hyon Myaeng, the Associate Vice President of the International Office at KAIST and a Co-chair of the 2016 IPFGRU said,
“The IPFGRU was established in 2008 to promote excellence and innovation in higher education with presidents of leading research universities and key policy-makers in the private and public sectors from across the world. Since then, it has served as one of the largest university gatherings in Asia, allowing participants to cooperate and share their expertise, ideas, and best practices taking place in academia, industry, and government.”
“This year’s meeting has recorded the largest number of universities participating, including 28 European schools, 20 Asian institutions, and 8 schools from the Americas, which I believe reflects a sense of urgency that global universities share. One way or another, we must adapt to the rapidly transforming educational and research environment encompassing higher learning,” added Myaeng.
For more information, go to http://forum.kaist.ac.kr.
2016.04.08 View 9841 -
Top Ten Ways Biotechnology Could Improve Our Everyday Life
The Global Agenda Council on Biotechnology, one of the global networks under the World Economic Forum, which is composed of the world’s leading experts in the field of biotechnology, announced on February 25, 2013 that the council has indentified “ten most important biotechnologies” that could help meet rapidly growing demand for energy, food, nutrition, and health. These new technologies, the council said, also have the potential to increase productivity and create new jobs.
“The technologies selected by the members of the Global Agenda Council on Biotechnology represent almost all types of biotechnology.Utilization of waste, personalized medicine,and ocean agricultureare examples of the challenges where biotechnology can offer solutions,”said Sang Yup Lee, Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Biotechnology and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He also added that “the members of the council concluded that regulatory certainty, public perception, and investment are the key enablers for the growth of biotechnology.”
These ideas will be further explored during “Biotechnology Week” at the World Economic Forum’s Blog (http://wef.ch/blog) from Monday, 25 February, 2013. The full list follows below:
Bio-based sustainable production of chemicals, energy, fuels and materials
Through the last century, human activity has depleted approximately half of the world’s reserves of fossil hydrocarbons. These reserves, which took over 600 million years to accumulate, are non-renewable and their extraction, refining and use contribute significantly to human emissions of greenhouse gases and the warming of our planet. In order to sustain human development going forward, a carbon-neutral alternative must be implemented. The key promising technology is biological synthesis; that is, bio-based production of chemicals, fuels and materials from plants that can be re-grown.
Engineering sustainable food production
The continuing increase in our numbers and affluence are posing growing challenges to the ability of humanity to produce adequate food (as well as feed, and now fuel). Although controversial, modern genetic modification of crops has supported growth in agricultural productivity. In 2011, 16.7 million farmers grew biotechnology-developed crops on almost 400 million acres in 29 countries, 19 of which were developing countries. Properly managed, such crops have the potential to lower both pesticide use and tilling which erodes soil.
Sea-water based bio-processes
Over 70% of the earth surface is covered by seawater, and it is the most abundant water source available on the planet. But we are yet to discover the full potential of it. For example with halliophic bacteria capable of growing in the seawater can be engineered to grow faster and produce useful products including chemicals, fuels and polymeric materials. Ocean agriculture is also a promising technology. It is based on the photosynthetic biomass from the oceans, like macroalgae and microalgae.
Non-resource draining zero waste bio-processing
The sustainable goal of zero waste may become a reality with biotechnology. Waste streams can be processed at bio-refineries and turned into valuable chemicals and fuels, thereby closing the loop of production with no net waste. Advances in biotechnology are now allowing lower cost, less draining inputs to be used, including methane, and waste heat. These advances are simplifying waste streams with the potential to reduce toxicity as well as support their use in other processes, moving society progressively closer to the sustainable goal of zero waste.
Using carbon dioxide as a raw material
Biotechnology is poised to contribute solutions to mitigate the growing threat of rising CO2 levels. Recent advances are rapidly increasing our understanding of how living organisms consume and use CO2. By harnessing the power of these natural biological systems, scientists are engineering a new wave of approaches to convert waste CO2 and C1 molecules into energy, fuels, chemicals, and new materials.
Regenerative medicine
Regenerative medicine has become increasingly important due to both increased longevity and treatment of injury. Tissue engineering based on various bio-materials has been developed to speed up the regenerative medicine. Recently, stem cells, especially the induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), have provided another great opportunity for regenerative medicine. Combination of tissue engineering and stem cell (including iPS) technologies will allow replacements of damaged or old human organs with functional ones in the near future.
Rapid and precise development and manufacturing of medicine and vaccines
A global pandemic remains one of the most real and serious threats to humanity. Biotechnology has the potential to rapidly identify biological threats, develop and manufacture potential cures. Leading edge biotechnology is now offering the potential to rapidly produce therapeutics and vaccines against virtually any target. These technologies, including messenger therapeutics, targeted immunotherapies, conjugated nanoparticles, and structure-based engineering, have already produced candidates with substantial potential to improve human health globally.
Accurate, fast, cheap, and personalized diagnostics and prognostics
Identification of better targets and combining nanotechnology and information technology it will be possible to develop rapid, accurate, personalized and inexpensive diagnostics and prognostics systems.
Bio-tech improvements to soil and water
Arable land and fresh water are two of the most important, yet limited, resources on earth. Abuse and mis-appropriation have threatened these resources, as the demand on them has increased. Advances in biotechnology have already yielded technologies that can restore the vitality and viability of these resources. A new generation of technologies: bio-remediation, bio-regeneration and bio-augmentation are being developed, offering the potential to not only further restore these resources, but also augment their potential.
Advanced healthcare through genome sequencing
It took more than 13 years and $1.5 billion to sequence the first human genome and today we can sequence a complete human genome in a single day for less than $1,000. When we analyze the roughly 3 billion base pairs in such a sequence we find that we differ from each other in several million of these base pairs. In the vast majority of cases these difference do not cause any issues but in rare cases they cause disease, or susceptibility to disease. Medical research and practice will increasingly be driven by our understanding of such genetic variations together with their phenotypic consequences.
2013.03.19 View 12555