It’s been four months since the year 2012 began. About a half year has passed since the inauguration of the President Yongmin Kim, the 6th president of POSTECH. In eight months, it will be the 26th anniversary of our university which was founded on Dec. 3, 1986. Also, Apr. 1, was the 44th anniversary of POSCO, which played the role of originator of our school. This review of our history in this short column is because the 18th anniversary for the death of founding president, Mueunjae Dr. Hogil Kim is near. Apr. 30 is the day of memorial for the founding President Kim who played an important ro

In the 23rd century, the world population is expected to be saturated at about ~11 billion. The explosive growth of population even with the current life standard and industrial capacity to support the growth requires a steep increase rate of energy consumption. It is natural that the consumption rate of fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal will escalate with an aid of small portion of green energy. A generous prediction of the end of available fossil fuels would be around year ~2500. An immediate response would be “why do we care about the long term problem?”The problems that we are going

For some people, the mere thought of grammar conjures up the image of a dowdy schoolmarm droning on about prissy grammar rules as she raps the knuckles of the defiant or grammar-challenged with a battle-hardened ruler. In my childhood days, however, grammar was rather congenial. In elementary school we were taught the eight parts of speech, some general rules, and later, how to diagram sentences, a rather simplistic but fairly effective look at grammatical structures. And in graduate school, the old tree diagrams of the past transmogrified into unruly micro-branches that resembled fractal geom

Can anyone own science? If so, what form of ownership can it take? This short essay is a brief introduction to the ways in which we can think of science and the ownership of science with critical consciousness.It all starts with a chain of following questions. How does knowledge travel from the origin of its place, say a laboratory, to other places and acquire its universality? Why and how is it that the laws of Newton can be found anywhere around the globe? One may attribute universality of knowledge, more specifically scientific knowledge, to its intrinsic values associated with objectivity

The vast majority of POSTECH international students are understandably grateful to the former president Sunggi Baik since he initiated the ‘Bilingual Campus’plan in 2010, announcing that “The Bilingual Campus Declaration will commence with this matriculation ceremony, and English, in addition to Korean, will be adopted as an official language of POSTECH.” In fact, it was a promising start for POSTECH in light of its long-term strategy to become a real world-class university in 2020. However, what has been achieved so far has not satisfied foreign students, nor has it met their needs in the sch

The scene: a classic Bostonian setting on a warm fall afternoon, not unlike the recently beautiful days here in Pohang. On a park bench amidst trees reflecting the influence of autumn in Boston Commons, two men sit looking out over the pond. The older gentleman questions his young client, “You’ve never been out of Boston have you?” The man in his 20’s shakes his head, no. “So if I asked you about art, you could probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him, but I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You never actu

The Seoul Forum 2011 was held on Sep. 27~28, with a subtitle, “Science & Technology is Future: Creativity, Convergence, Communication.” I could feel the strong will to solve the current problems with science in the “Science & Technology is Future,” part of the subtitle . Then, what are the current problems which should be solved with science? Chaired Professor Jae-Chun Chae of the Dept. of Eco-science at Ewha Womans University described the problem as “homework.” He said “Korea has been considered as successful at solving the given problems. However, in order to proceed to a higher ground, it

Albert Einstein said ‘Galileo is the father of modern science,’ and I agree with him. Galileo introduced the method of modern science and used it to understand various natural phenomena. He planted seeds for analytical geometry, differential and integral calculus, Newton’s mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity, among others. He believed that nature is written in the language of mathematics.The society where Galileo was growing up was very authoritarian, and Aristotle’s philosophy was absolute. No one dared question Aristotle’s theory. One day Galileo was looking at the falling hailston

Have you ever heard ‘the Long March through National Land (Long March)’ which was opened every year in POSETCH? Hi, I’m Kim Jeong-woo who served as the leader of this year’s event. From its preparation process to my personal feelings, I will introduce the Long March from A to Z. Before writing, I want to express my appreciation to Suh-young who walked with us and gave me a wonderful chance to share our unforgettable experience.To begin with, the Long March involves walking 30 km foreight hours every day, cooking our own meals, sleeping in a tent, and more walking. One of the Long March’s featu

Mr. Tae-Joon Park the Founding Chairman, Mr. Joon-yang Chung Chairman of the Board, distinguished guests, faculty, staff and students of POSTECH,It is my great honor and privilege to be appointed as the 6th President of POSTECH. I would like to express my deep appreciation to the POSTECH Board of Trustees and the Chairman of the Board for their confidence and trust in me to lead POSTECH to the next level of excellence. POSTECH was founded only 25 years ago. Yet, due to the belief and tireless efforts of the Founding Chairman of the Board, Mr. Tae-Joon Park, the Founding President, Dr. Hogil Ki

Food in the cafeteria is exceptionally good and rich in nutrition but a vegetarian customer does not have many options. Given that rice is the main course in Korea, I honestly request [for] you to please provide some fried rice without any meat. Later in the day if there is still some rice left it can always be mixed with the rice containing meat. Picking out the meat from the meal is [a] very tedious and unmannerly job but mixing it together is extremely simple and mundane, I guess. Kapil Gangwar (MSE, Ph.D candidate)Not only for showing off with some figural criteria in statistics, but for d

Do you know the atomic number of gold? Maybe an answer pops up in your mind but you are not sure. You memorized it long ago but because of stress, lack of sleep, or the alcohol from last night, your memory is not working properly. You know that the right answer is definitely at some place in your brain, but you are having a hard time locating it. Your connection to that information in your brain is neither fast nor reliable. Fortunately, you have a much faster and more reliable connection to another place where the information is stored. Yes, it is the internet. Instead of continuing a fruitle

It was a really gloomy and humid summer with frequent rainfall. Many people, perhaps more than I, have been looking forward to the coming of fall. Even though it is far from what we have expected, this fall there are a lot of events from its start, especially for The Postech Times. We welcome the new publisher, also the new president, President Yongmin Kim. In addition, two more happy occasions are to come.After the former Editor-in-chief Kim Eun-ji, I was appointed as The Postech Times? third Editor-in-chief last July. Only I can be seen in the commemorative photograph taken two years ago. Be

Globalization has become a catchword to celebrate every aspect of the modern world. In the omnipresent societal atmosphere where global literacy is indispensably valued, students are pushed to add a global specs onto their resumes, with impressive TOEFL scores being the most sought after.Reflecting on the concept of globalization, I have come to think in a threefold way. First is the target of the globalization effort. Globalization is only truly achieved when the subject human beings are globalized. When the members of a community are globalized, there is no need to dress up the outside with

Living at POSTECH is a great experience, even though it has been difficult at times. I am actually teaching English off-campus, but I get to live at POSTECH because my husband is a student here. Compared to other English teachers, I consider myself lucky because I get to live at POSTECH with my husband instead of in the city. The attractive campus, international community, and ongoing improvements make any hardships worth going through.First of all, the campus is really pretty. All the different colors and shapes of the trees and plants, as well as the rocks and sidewalks, make walking around

The recent suicides at KAIST have shocked the whole society and brought attention to the pressures on students at Korea’s top universities. One of the suicides was a talented student who gained an unconventional admission to KAIST as a graduate of a vocational high school. Although he had an outstanding ability in robot research and did his earnest effort to catch up with the class and adapt, the specialized atmosphere of that university did not allow him to communicate well with his peers and made the robot prodigy incompetent. It seems that the immoderate emphasis on academic ability and com

According to a recent United Nations report, the world population will not stop growing at 9 billion, but it will continue and perhaps reach 10.1 billion by 2100. Already the world is crowded with more than 6 billion people. Imagining a world with a population 1.5 times that of today is daunting. With such an exponentially increasing population, could the world finally fall into chaos (whereby it is plagued by hunger, disease and war) as asserted by Thomas Robert Malthus in the 18th Century in his “Essay on the Principle of Population”? My answer is a definite no. The advances in agricultural

“If you don’t eat meat, what do you eat then?”Most often, the “Vegetarian Spotlight” is a cause of discomfort. When I eat with someone I meet first, I dread the moment when the conversation turns to my dietary choices. One day, during break time, my project leader realized that I did not eat the pizza or chicken that he ordered for his team members. After asking the stereotypical question that most Koreans might pop, he made a face and forced me to have some; from his point of view, he ordered foods for team members, and I, as a member of the team, should at least pretend like I’m eating some,

What is your resolution this year? Most of us begin a new year, resolving to work out more, save money for backpacking, or study harder. Now that it’s April already, and one quarter of the year is already gone, it would be good time to face an inconvenient truth: How is your resolution going?I don’t know about you, but my resolution, to work out regularly, is falling apart. I googled “why resolution” then the search engine auto-completed my query with the following suggestions: “why resolutions fail,” “why resolutions don’t work,” and “why resolutions don’t last.” If all POSTECH resolutions di

Among commonly known Korean proverbs, there is one which says, ‘Stagnant water is bound to go bad.’ Without any air ventilation or water flow, water in a pot is bound to corrupt. It means, figuratively speaking, that people and organizations will become stagnant or even degraded if there is no stimulation or change.Unfortunately, many features of the social background among Postechians are enough to have us keep the proverb in mind.Our school, POSTECH, is deficient in a broad spectrum of the backgrounds and characters of university members due to a limited diversity in majors. Also, geographic