In March 9, the delegation of Group INSA of France, lead by Director M’Hamed Drissi of INSA Rennes, visited the POSTECH campus.

President Doh-Yeon Kim and the delegation discussed future possibilities of furthering the collaboration between Group INSA and K-STAR, of which the 2 organizations formed a multilateral partnership on October 2018.

Prof. Boram Kim of INSA Lyon is also a POSTECH Graduate.

– Genexine, ASU, and over 20 pharmaceutical institutes to move into the BOIC
– Initiative launched to build the first Cell Membrane Protein Research Institute in Korea

 

 

POSTECH cut the first sod on the site of the new Bio Open Innovation Center (BOIC) on February 26, 2019. The BOIC, an innovation platform for academia-industry collaboration on new drug research, is one of POSTECH’s signature initiatives to drive the regional development as in line with its vision of becoming a Value Creating University.

 

The groundbreaking ceremony for BOIC was held in attendance of more than 200. The guests included POSTECH president Doh-Yeon Kim, economic vice governor of Gyeongbuk province, mayor of Pohang, local member of the National Assembly (Mr. Myoung-Jae Park), president of Genexine, POSCO officials, and representatives of biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

 

POSTECH, Pohang city, and Genexine have made a joint investment in the BOIC with the aim of developing it into a new drug industry base. They anticipate that the BOIC will boost the tri-sector collaboration on new drug research, bringing the academia, industry, and research institutes closer. It will also lay the foundation for a regional industry ecosystem through incubating biotech startups and attracting firms and research institutes. Genexine, one of the co-investors, is widely known as a successful model of a biotech venture company. The once nascent startup, founded by POSTECH professor Young-Chul Sung, has now grown into a Korea’s leading pharmaceutical company.

 

Along with domestic and overseas bio companies and research institutes set to move in, the BOIC is to be equipped with a new drug development pilot plant that supports the testing and production of new drug candidates. A project bureau for the Cell Membrane Protein Research Institute (CMPRI) will also settle in the BOIC.

 

The establishment of the BOIC has been of great importance in POSTECH’s efforts to contribute to the regional development. It will serve as the focal point for developing the high value-added pharmaceutical industry and attracting enterprises with new job opportunities.

 

Gyeongbuk province and Pohang city are, likewise, taking the lead in the investment for this initiative and adding momentum to bringing in business from home and abroad, encouraging entrepreneurship, and training bio experts. They are hoping that these movements will ultimately lead to a boost in job creation in the region.

 

As part of the BOIC groundbreaking ceremony, the CMPRI project bureau kicked off on the same day with an inauguration ceremony. This project is one of the core schemes for new drug research pivoted on the PAL-XFEL.

 

At the inauguration, POSTECH, Gyeongbuk province, Pohang city, and POSCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding and agreed to support the establishment and management of the Cell Membrane Protein Research Institute. The ceremony was followed by the unveiling of the signboard of the Institute and announcing the appointment of Professor Jie-Oh Lee of Life Sciences as the head of the project. Professor Lee, listed in the top 100 rising influential Koreans, is a domestic authority in the field of cell membrane protein.

 

The Cell Membrane Protein Institute will use the PAL-XFEL, the 4th generation light source, to identify the structure of the cell membrane protein and derive candidate substances of new drug. Despite the fact that cell membrane proteins account for over 60% of the causes of diseases, the examination and analysis of their biostructure still largely remain an unsolved problem due to the complexity. The Institute, for that reason, is expected to provide a breakthrough for Korea’s new drug industry and help rise in the global market that has reached 1,500 trillion KRW.

 

Doh-Yeon Kim said, “Pohang has achieved incredible development based on the steel industry represented by POSCO, but now it is time to take a second leap. As a Value Creating University, POSTECH hopes to lead the betterment of Gyeongbuk province and Pohang city hand in hand with BOIC.”

[Scientists are getting closer to finding ways to store larger amounts of hydrogen within an ice-like solid]

Recently, Professors Kun-Hong Lee and Bo Ram Lee at POSTECH have introduced a new concept for improving hydrogen storage capacity inside the structure formed by water molecules called gas hydrates.

 

Simply, gas hydrates are ice-like solid compounds including gas. In case of naturally occurring methane hydrates, it is estimated as a future energy resource since trillions of tonnes of methane are trapped as methane clathrates in nature all over the world.

 

One volume of hydrates contains about 160 times the volume of gas at standard temperature and pressure, and this leads scientists to look for ways to use gas hydrates as a medium for hydrogen storage. The main problem facing scientists so far has been storing hydrogen in the hydrate structure at milder condition consuming less energy (it typically needs at least 200 megapascals for pure hydrogen hydrates or 10 megapascals even with the injection of thermodynamic promoter), and simultaneously, increasing hydrogen capacity even at these mild conditions.

 

To overcome this intrinsic issue of gas hydrates, a team of scientists in Korea and the US (Colorado School of Mines) investigated the abnormal behaviour of metastability of gas hydrates. Here, the metastability is determined as a stable state of a dynamical system: a state that can be changed by the addition of a small amount of energy. By using the metastability of gas hydrates, they successfully made hydrogen hydrates stable at very mild pressure (0.5 to 1 megapascals) and demonstrated highly increased hydrogen storage (up to 52% larger amount) in the hydrates.

 

“If an appropriate process is designed to trap the system in this metastable state with a high concentration of gas, coupled with the benefits of hydrate self-preservation, a new paradigm will be born for gas storage in clathrate hydrates,” the researchers conclude.

 

The research has been chosen to be on the front cover (February issue) of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C published by American Chemistry Society.

 

Dr. Mun Y. Choi, who is the first Asian American to become president of the University of Missouri System in 177 years of its history, is awarded an honorary doctorate at POSTECH.

 

POSTECH decided to award an honorary doctorate of mechanical engineering to President Mun Y. Choi and, the degree was awarded to him at the 2019 POSTECH Matriculation Ceremony held in the auditorium of the university on February 15.

 

President Choi, the world’s renowned scholar in thermal engineering, immigrated to Ohio, U.S.A with his family at the age of nine and, he received his master’s and doctorate degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University.

 

After serving as a faculty at University of Illinois at Chicago and Drexel University, he was appointed as a dean of engineering at the University of Connecticut (UConn) in 2008. In 2012, he took on a role as a provost and executive vice president of the university. During his term in the office, he led development of research capabilities and increased industrial partnerships, making the UConn a top 25 national university.

 

Acknowledging his leadership, the University of Missouri System with its 177 years of history appointed him as the first Asian American president to oversee its four campuses and 77,000 faculty and staff in March 2017.

 

At the ceremony, President Doh-Yeon Kim of POSTECH comment-ed in his welcoming speech, “President Mun Y. Choi immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. As a 1.5 generation immigrant, he might have faced countless difficulties, however, he has made distinctive research achievements and contributed to development of science and technology and higher education through his innovative leadership. I am confident that he will inspire many newcomers, students, faculty and staff of POSTECH as a person who has well illustrated our motto; creativity, integrity, and aspiration.”

 

In response, President Mun Y. Choi said, “I am very honored to be-come a part of POSTECH that has declared to be a value-creating university for a better future of the nation and the humanity.” He also encouraged students saying, “Although I have become the first Asian American president of the University of Missouri System, my youth was very normal and there was no extraordinary thing in those past days. If I can do it, you can do it, too.”

 

With reference to honorary doctorate, POSTECH has been awarded honorary doctorates to distinguished people in the nation and around the globe, who remarkably attributed to development of academia, the nation, and humanity. After Dr. Roderick MacKinnon of Rockefeller University, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, first received the degree in 2006, it was awarded to six more individuals including Dr. Jeong-Hoon Kim, former president of Bell Labs in 2010, Dr. Peter S. Kim, former president of Merck Research Laboratories in 2011, Seok-hyun Hong, chairmain of JoongAng Holdings in 2016, Ryoji Noyori, Nobel laureate and endowed chair faculty of Nagoya University and Jin-kyu Huh, chairman of Iljin Group in 2018.

Dear international members of POSTECH,

International Relations cordially invites you to the 2019 Lunar New Year Celebration!

Please stop by ISSS to meet other international members and enjoy Korean snacks and beverages. To celebrate the Lunar New Year, we have prepared special gifts: Korean traditional kite making kits for children & Korean folk games and herb tea with beautiful paintings of Korea’s famous cities for international members.

*Gifts will be given on a first-come, first- served basis. 

 

[Time & Date] 15:00-17:00, January 31 (Thu), 2019

[Venue] ISSS, 1F of POSCO International Center

 

*This event is only for POSTECH-registered international students, scholars, and their family.

**For inquiries on this event, please contact Ms. Dabin Jeong,

International Relations (E. dabinjeong@postech.ac.kr, T. 79-3689).

 

For detailed information, please refer to the 2019 Lunar New Year Celebration Invitation.

 

Thank you.

 

International Student and Scholar Services

International Relations

On January 8^th, nearly 190,000 attendants and 4,500 companies from around the globe gathered at the Las Vegas Convention Center for the annual CES. For over fifty years, world-changing technological innovations such as the VCR, camcorder, CD player, HDTV, and 3D printer, to name a few, have been introduced to the marketplace at CES.

 

Sharing the floor alongside industry giants such as Dolby, Intel, and Samsung at CES 2019 was Polaris3D—a startup established in 2016 by a group of POSTECH students. Led by CEO Inveom Kwak (Department of Creative IT and Engineering), Polaris3D provides solutions for precise and affordable self-driving indoor robots through autonomous localization.  

 

Polaris3D showcased ANS—Autonomous Navigating Solution—whereby precision self-driving is made possible by simply mounting a device onto the indoor robot. Without the need for additional and expensive infrastructures like UWB (Ultra Wideband) wireless connections, and unlike existing SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) based technology and its massive computing requirements, Polaris3D’s proprietary mapping algorithms can operate in real-time with minimal power consumption and no additional equipment. As such, the application of ANS is flexible enough to be customizable into various fields such as logistics applications, drones, forklifts, and other service robots.

 

The company is currently offering demos for industry and research applications, and expects to release ANS during the first half of 2019.

My dear POSTECH family members,

 

2019, the Year of the Earth Pig (Gi-Hae-Nyeon 己亥年) has arrived. I would like to extend the sincerest of wishes for the realization of all your endeavors in the new year.

 

I offer my deepest gratitude to POSTECH members everywhere for your vigorous devotion in elevating our university to new heights. I am filled with anticipation towards another year where the sweat and toils of all Postechians actualize into numerous achievements for the furtherance of academia and nation.

 

In 2018, the first class of the Mueunjae School of Undergraduate Studies brought about exciting metamorphoses. By not restricting newly admitted students into specific departments, the novel academic policy has empowered them to freely pursue their academic passions, engage in diverse activities, and lead proactive studies. Appropriately, the foundations for strengthening social sciences and humanities were set in place as well. These undertakings will play a key role in equipping our students with a wide breadth of convergent skillsets and profound knowledge to become crucial members of society.

 

Furthermore, POSTECH has exerted a great deal of effort to bolster the sustainable advancement of the university. We have welcomed many new faculty members who will undoubtedly continue our tradition of research excellence. We have built bridges both with a diverse group of institutions—such as Yonsei University, Samsung Electronics, and the Korean Air Force—for in-depth collaborations, and with our local community through the establishment of the Future City Open Innovation Center to usher in the era of smart cities. This past year will also be remembered for the establishment of the 1st POSTECH Fund which will enable startups to readily enter the market and create real-world socioeconomic value. Our feats did not go unrecognized as JoongAng Ilbo recently ranked POSTECH as the most innovative university in Korea.
All this was can be attributed to the enterprising travails of every single member of POSTECH.

 

My proud Postechians!
It has been two years since we began our expedition towards fulfilling the Value Creating University vision. We have now taken our first steps. This vast aspiration that we seek to achieve will require tireless strivings. It is undoubtedly a difficult task, but that is exactly the reason why only POSTECH can accomplish it.

 

Our challenging spirit will flourish unabated through 2019. We will expand and establish a robust startup ecosystem by focusing on the strengths of POSTECH and the Jigok neighborhood. We will break ground for the Bio Open Innovation Center that will utilize the 4th generation accelerator. There will be infrastructure modernization projects that will not only renovate older buildings but also construct new facilities for the safety and comfort of Postechians. And most importantly, our greatest efforts will be expended to attract outstanding faculty members and students with boundless potentials.

 

Let us effectuate the quintessential role of the university through peerless education, promote a campus teeming with ideas and dreams, and pay heed to societal discourse to define and sculpt POSTECH’s next 30 years of contributing to the betterment of the nation and humanity. The future of POSTECH is the future of Korea.

 

May 2019 overflow with nothing but blessings and joy for all our families.
Happy New Year!

 

January 1, 2019

 

Doh-Yeon Kim
President of POSTECH