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Bicycle Sharing System "Ta-Shu" Arrives at KAIST.
KAIST has begun providing a bike rental service, called “Ta-Shu,” to its students. This bicycle sharing system, implemented in tandem with the local city government, has been in service since the 7th of September and will allow KAIST students to rent bicycles for travel within campus and even to other parts of the city, Daejeon.
The ‘University Pubic-Bicycle Rental System’ is a program in which numbers of bicycles are made available for shared use by students. Initiated by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, the university expects that more students will use bicycles as part of their daily mobility means through this system.
2011.09.22 View 8643 -
Professor Lee Sang Yeop Nominated the Chairman of Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum
Professor Lee Sang Yeop, Dean of College Life Science & Bioengineering, was appointed as the chairman of the Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum.
He will be in office till the 31st of August 2012, exactly 1 year from the date of his appointment.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a ‘think tank’ consisting of world leaders in various fields like economics, politics, and policies and has created the ‘Global Agenda Council’ to solve the problems mankind faces in achieving environmentally sustainable growth and suggest a collective vision and strategy.
The committee to be chaired by Professor Lee (Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council) will discuss the direction in which the fields of biological engineering, nanotechnology, and IT (information technology) should develop and discuss the possible impact these fields will have on the society.
Professor Lee commented that, “I am extremely happy to be appointed as the chair of the Emerging Technologies Global Agenda Council at the World Economic Forum which is a gathering of world class leaders” and that “it is a great opportunity to spread Korea’s success and lessons in the advancement of science and technology.”
Professor Lee is the creator of the field of system metabolism engineering and is making great strides in manipulating the microorganism’s metabolic pathways on a systems scale to make changing chemicals derived from oil into eco-friendly and bio-based products.
2011.09.20 View 9961 -
KAIST Online Electirc Vehicle Introduced by CNN
CNN aired KAIST’s Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) on August 29, 2011 in its program called “Eco Solutions” that reports on meeting people with innovative solutions to preserve the planet. The reporter went to Seoul Grand Park, an amusement park and introduced an online electric tram developed by KAIST and operated on a daily basis for park visitors since July 29, 2011. KAIST has designed different types of OLEVs including bus, SUV, and tram. The reporter said that “the online electric tram” at the park provides visitors with a “cleaner, greener, and convenience since it charges as you go.” Currently, three OLEVs are running inside the park, and KAIST plans to replace the rest of existing diesel trams with OLEVs in the near future.
CNN Link: http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/eco.solutions/index.html
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLzmFFqPJfo
2011.09.09 View 11129 -
Op-Ed by MIT President, Manufacturing a Recovery, New York Times, August 29, 2011
New York Times carried an opinion piece of MIT President, Susan Hockfield. Dr. Hockfield put emphasis on the importance of recovering manufacturing to revive the US economy and suggested investments in the development of high technology and “tight integration of design production” through “networks of innovation, lab research to new production processes, and business models.” For the op-ed piece, please go to
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/manufacturing-a-recovery.html?_r=2.
2011.08.31 View 10721 -
Future of Petrochemical Industry: The Age of Bio-Refineries
The concept of bio-refinery is based on using biomass from seaweeds and non-edible plant sources to produce various materials.
Bio-refineries has been looked into with increasing interest in modern times due to the advent of global warming (and the subsequent changes in the atmosphere) and the exhaustion of natural resources.
However past 20 years of research in metabolic engineering had a crucial limitation; the need to improve the efficiency of the microorganisms that actually go about converting biomass into biochemical materials.
In order to compensate for the inefficiency, Professor Lee Sang Yeop combined systems biology, composite biology, evolutionary engineering to form ‘systems metabolic engineering’.
This allows combining various data to explain the organism’s state in a multi-dimensional scope and respond accordingly by controlling the metabolism.
The result of the experiment is set as the cover dissertation of ‘Trends in Biotechnology’ magazine’s August edition.
2011.07.28 View 12136
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Wireless electric trams at Seoul Amusement Park begin full operations.
Photo by Hyung-Joon Jun
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wireless electric trams at Seoul Amusement Park begin full operations.
KAIST’s On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) becomes an icon of green technology, particularly for young students who aspire to transform their nation into the “vanguard of sustainability.”
Seoul, South Korea, July 19, 2011—As young students wrap up their school work before summer vacation in late July, Seoul Grand Park, an amusement park located south of Seoul, is busily preparing to accommodate throngs of summer visitors. Among the park’s routine preparations, however, there is something new to introduce to guests this summer: three wireless electric trams have replaced the old diesel-powered carts used by passengers for transportation within the park.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the city of Seoul held a ceremony this morning, July 19, 2011, to celebrate their joint efforts to adopt a green public transportation system and presented park visitors with the three On-Line Electric Vehicles (OLEVs), which will be operated immediately thereafter. Approximately one hundred people, including science high school students across the nation, attended the ceremony and had a chance to ride the trams.
KAIST unveiled the prototype of an electric tram to the public in March 2010, and since then it has developed three commercial trams. The Korean government and the institute have worked on legal issues to embark on the full-scale commercialization of OLEV, and the long awaited approval from the government on such issues as standardization of the OLEV technology and road infrastructure, regulation of electromagnetic fields and electricity safety, and license and permits for vehicle eligibility, finally came through.
The On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) is no ordinary electric car in that it is remotely charged via electromagnetic fields created by electric cables buried beneath the road. Unlike other currently available electric cars, OLEV can travel unlimited distances without having to stop to recharge. OLEV also has a small battery onboard, which enables the vehicle to travel on roads that are not equipped with underground power cables. This battery, however, is only one-fifth of the size of a conventional electric vehicle battery, resulting in considerable savings in the cost, size, and weight of the vehicle.
The OLEV project was initiated in 2009 as a method of resolving the battery problems of electric cars in a creative and disruptive way. KAIST came up with the idea of supplying electricity directly to the cars instead of depending solely on the onboard battery for power. Since then, the university has developed core technologies related to OLEV such as the “Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance (SMFIR),” which enables an electric car to collect the magnetic fields and convert them into electricity, and the “Segment Technology,” which controls the flow of electromagnetic waves through an automatic power-on/shut-down system, thereby eliminating accidental exposure of the electromagnetic waves to pedestrians or non-OLEV cars.
According to KAIST, three types of OLEV have been developed thus far: electric buses, trams, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). The technical specifications of the most recently developed OLEV (an electric bus), the OLEV research team at the university said, are as follows:
· Power cables are buried 15cm beneath the road surface.
· On average, over 80% power transmission efficiency is achieved.
· The distance gap between the road surface and the underbody of the vehicle is 20cm.
· The OLEV bus has a maximum electricity pickup capacity of 100kW.
· The OLEV bus complies with international standards for electromagnetic fields (below 24.1 mG).
The eco-friendly electric trams at Seoul Grand Park consume no fossil fuels and do not require any overhead wires or cables. Out of the total circular driving route (2.2km), only 16% of the road, 372.5m, has the embedded power lines, indicating that OLEV does not require extensive reconstruction of the road infrastructure. The city government of Seoul signed a memorandum of understanding with KAIST in 2009 as part of its initiatives to curtail emissions from public transportation and provide cleaner air to its citizens. Both parties plan to expand such collaboration to other transportation systems including buses in the future.
KAIST expects the OLEV technology to be applied in industries ranging from transportation to electronics, aviation, maritime transportation, robotics, and leisure. There are several ongoing international collaborative projects to utilize the OLEV technology for a variety of transportation needs, such as inner city commute systems (bus and trolley) and airport shuttle buses, in nations including Malaysia, US, Germany, and Denmark.
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More information about KAIST’s On-Line Electric Vehicle can be found at http://olev.co.kr/en/index.php. For any inquiries, please contact Lan Yoon at 82-42-350-2295 (cell: 82-10-2539-4303) or by email at hlyoon@kaist.ac.kr.
2011.07.22 View 15895 -
Scientists develop highly efficient industrial catalyst
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2011/07/14/48/0501000000AEN20110714009600320F.HTML
SEOUL, July 15 (Yonhap) -- South Korean scientists said Friday that they have developed a highly efficient nanoporous industrial catalyst that can have a considerable impact on chemical and oil-refining sectors.
The team of scientists led by Ryoo Ryong, a chemistry professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), said the solid zeolite compound developed in the laboratory has a reaction speed five to 10 times faster than that of conventional materials.
Zeolite, which is made from silica and aluminium, is frequently used as an absorbent, water purifier and in nuclear reprocessing, although it is mainly employed in the chemical industry.
The annual size of the zeolite market is estimated at US$2.5 billion with output using the material topping $30 billion. At present, 41 percent of all catalysts used in the chemical sector are nano-scale zeolite materials.
The KAIST team said that because the new zeolite is made up of different sized pores, the material can be used as a catalyst when existing materials are unable to act as a changing agent.
"Existing zeolites only have pores under 1 nanometer in diameter, but the new material has holes that range from 1 nanometer to 3.5 nanometers, which are all arranged in a regular honeycomb arrangement," Ryoo said. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.
He said the ability to have both micro- and meso-sized pores is key to the faster reaction speed that is an integral part of raising efficiency. The South Korean researchers used a so-called surfactant process to make the different sizes of pores.
The development is a breakthrough because researchers and companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. have been trying to build zeolite with different sizes of pores for the past two decades without making serious headway. There are more than 200 different types of zeolites in the world.
Ryoo, who received funding from the government, has requested intellectual property rights for the discovery, which has been published in the latest issue of Science magazine. He also developed another zeolite in the past that can transform methanol to gasoline up to 10 times more efficiently than existing catalysts.
Exxon Mobil has expressed interest in the two zeolites made by Ryoo"s team. Undisclosed South Korean petrochemical companies have also made inquiries that may lead to commercial development in the future.
"There are some technical issues to resolve, mainly related with mass production and stability," the scientist said.
He said full-fledge production will be determined by how much companies are willing to spend on research to speed up development that can bring down overall production costs.
The KAIST team said it took two years to make the new zeolite, which can be custom made to meet specific needs.
(END)
2011.07.15 View 12776
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2010 Summer Davos Forum: Online Electric Vehicle Project Presented, September 13-15, 2010 in Tenjin, China
President Nam-Pyo Suh (picture above) was invited by the World Economic Forum to “2010 Summer Davos Forum” held in Tenjin, China, from September 13-15, 2010, at which he presented one of the university’s flagship research projects, Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), in the session of IdeasLab. The IdeasLab is a special session format to present innovative ideas in partnership with leading universities including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Ching Hwa University, Keio University, etc. KAIST is the first university in Korea that attended to this session. For details of President Suh’s presentation, Sustainability: An Engine for Growth, please follow the links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDUU4RPjibg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P9StHTt19E
2011.07.11 View 10463 -
KAIST Tops Patent List Among Domestic Universities, Chosun Ilbo, July 5, 2011
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office, KAIST took the first place among the universities in Korea registering patents from 2006 to 2010. For the article from Chosun Ilbo, please go to the below link:
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/07/05/2011070500743.html
2011.07.05 View 10571
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Biomimetic Carbon Nanotube Fiber Synthesis Technology Developed
The byssus of the mussel allows it to live in harsh conditions where it is constantly battered by crashing waves by allowing the mussel to latch onto the seaside rocks. This particular characteristic of the mussel is due to the unique structure and high adhesiveness of the mussel’s byssus.
KAIST’s Professor Hong Soon Hyung (Department of Material Science and Engineering) and Professor Lee Hae Shin (Department of Chemistry) and the late Professor Park Tae Kwan (Department of Bio Engineering) were able to reproduce the mussel’s byssus using carbon nanotubes.
The carbon nanotube, since its discovery in 1991, was regarded as the next generation material due to its electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. However due to its short length of several nanometers, its industrial use was limited.
The KAIST research team referred to the structure of the byssus of the mussel to solve this problem.
The byssus is composed of collagen fibers and Mefp-1 protein which are in a cross-linking structure. The Mefp-1 protein has catecholamine that allows it to bind strongly with the collagen fiber.
In the artificial structure, the carbon nanotube took on the role of the collagen fibers and the macromolecular adhesive took on the role of the catecholamine. The result was a fiber that was ultra-light and ultra-strong.
The results of the experiment were published in the Advanced Materials magazine and is patent registered both domestically and internationally.
2011.06.20 View 13428
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Professor Choi Han Lim receives Automatica Applications Paper Price
Professor Choi Han Lim of the Department of Aerospace received ‘Automatica Applications Paper Prize’ for the first time ever for a Korean.
Professor Choi published a paper in the Automatica magazine with the topic of ‘Continuous Trajectory Planning of Mobile Sensors for Informative Forecasting’.
Professor Choi dealt with most efficient measuring methods for mobile sensor platforms thereby improving the performance of anticipating environmental changes and proposed key theories for problem solving and also an efficient algorithm.
The research was conducted in cooperation with MIT Department of Aerospace Professor Jonathan How with the support of the National Science Foundation.
Automatica
Journal published by the International Federation of Automatic Control and has been awarding the Automatica Paper Prize every three years.
2011.05.31 View 8855
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Displaybank, KAIST Develops Flexible Display Metal Wiring Technology, May 27, 2011
On May 26, Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIST) announced that team of Prof. Yang from the Department of Mechanical Engineering developed flexible display metal wiring manufacturing-technology. For the article, please follow the link,
http://www.displaybank.com/eng/info/sread.php?id=5877
2011.05.31 View 9294