The Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics (APCTP) signed an agreement with the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics (ITAP) on scholastic exchange this March 8.Executive Director of APCTP Professor Seunghwan Kim from the Department of Physics and Tugrul Hakioglu the ITAP agreed to exchange scientists of each facility, hold joint workshops and conduct international joint research.ITAP is located in Turkey on the coast of the Mediterranean and was founded in 2006. Its investment in educating young minds is one of the outstanding facts about ITAP. “This would be a great opportunity f

For applicants among freshmen living in Resident College, an opportunity to learn table manners was offered on Mar. 19 in the grand ballroom of the POSCO International Center. A group adding up to 100 students applied to build up their table etiquette especially when eating Western-style meals. Students were given basic lectures about reservations, rules of conduct and sophisticated ways of eating a course meal starting from an aperitif and soup to dessert. After the lecture, their meals were served and they enjoyed the time of dining while exercising what they had learnt during the lecture. A

Welcoming World Brain Awareness Week, POSTECH’s Brain Research Center, chaired by Prof. Kim Dai-jin of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, held an open lecture titled ‘The Brain, Humans, and Computers’ on Mar. 19.For the general public a lecture titled ‘The Brain and Consciousness: Why man?’ by Prof. Seunghwan Kim of the Department of Physics and one named ‘Brain-Computer Interface’ by Prof. Kim Dai-jin were delivered, and a laboratory tour was held.The brain, different from other organs, is still an unexplored field so it is regarded as the last project of the 21st century in

POSTECH has announced its ‘Three-year Globalization Plan (2010~2012)’ and will focus on globalization to become a world top 50 university by 2013. Overall, 150 billion won will be invested for the plan, which includes the following: 1. securing excellent human resources, such as world top class professors who have won the Nobel Prize or Fields Medal (85.8 billion won), 2. building an international joint research base by attracting overseas world class laboratories and constructing a fusion research center (60 billion won), 3. making a global environment by establishing a bilingual campus and b

The official languages of POSTECH became Korean and English from the 2010 Matriculation Ceremony held in Mar. 2 at 11AM in the university auditorium, when a total of 868 undergraduate and graduate students joined the university.The ceremony was not only to celebrate 307 B.A, 203 M.S, 105 Ph.D and 255 M.S-Ph.D integrative program candidates to POSTECH, but also to declare the initiation of the ‘Bilingual Campus Plan.’ This new arrangement encompasses lectures, meetings and administrative documents which will be conducted and written in both Korean and English.In his matriculation address, Presi

Yu Ji-hoon, who is in the combined master’s and doctorate program of the Department of Material Science and Engineering under professor Hyoungseop Kim, received the Best Poster Gold Medal Award in Ultrafine Grained Materials VI (UFG6), the biggest symposium of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) 2010 held in Seattle, USA.He proposed a new evaluation method for a property of matter without experiments using the Finite Element Method, after executing experiments and simulations of Equal Channel Angular Pressing in his paper ‘Analysis of Post-Equal Channel Angular Pressing Behavior by

Professor Hong Gil Nam from the Department of Life Science was selected as the Hongdeuk Chair Professor. Prof. Nam is a pioneer in the field of the molecular genetics of leaf senescence and has proposed methods investigating the genome to discover the function of plant genetics. He is unprecedented among Korean scientists in having earned a ‘grand-slam’ by publishing his research achievements in highly recognized journals, such as Science, Cell and Nature. Also, he is a renowned authority in his research field, plant development, having citation rates over 300.The position of Hongdeuk Chair Pr

POSTECH awarded the TJ Park Graduate Fellowship and Postdoctoral Fellowship, which was established for reinforcement of the university’s research capability and for fostering of up-and-coming research human resources, to 22 selected people on Feb. 16. The 2010 TJ Park Graduate Fellowship awardees were 19, including Cook Woo-hyun, a ready-to-be graduate student in the combined master’s and doctorate program from Department of Mathematics, and Postdoctoral Fellowship awardees were 3, including Lee Sang-hyun, a postdoctoral researcher from the Division of Mechanical Engineering for Emerging Techn

The 2009 POSTECH Commencement Ceremony takes place at 2:00 PM on Feb. 17 at the gymnasium. A total of 734 students receive their degrees amid 1300 guests to celebrate today’s special event. The main ceremony starts at 2:00 PM, upon the arrival of the academic procession starting at 1:40 PM. The ceremony features a report on academic affairs, greetings from distinguished guest speakers, conferral of degrees and the award ceremony. After POSTECH President Sunggi Baik gives an opening address, the graduates will receive their commencement address from chairman Lee Gu-Taek. Tae-Joon Park, the foun

POSTECH announced the launching of a bilingual campus as of this coming March 2010. From the spring semester, lectures, faculty meetings, thesis papers and other services provided from the campus must be done in English in three years time.President Baik stated, “In order to be named as a global campus, it should be prepared as a place where foreign professors or students can come and experience little discomfort.” He will declare POSTECH as a Bilingual Campus at the beginning of March. The President will address an opening speech at the 2010 Matriculation Ceremony on Mar. 2.The plan to operat

POSTECH will undergo a major transition in the tenure system from this academic year. Professors will be weeded out once they fail the screening for promotion to associate professor and tenure after being given a year of probation. The evaluation includes a measure of talent and achievements of relevant faculty against those of three to five professors from the world’s top 20 universities in the related field. This reformed system is identical to that of Harvard University.According to the new tenure system, both assistant and associate professors must be subject to the tenure evaluation in 7

The first step to train intellectual property-based (IP-based) gifted entrepreneurs was started by POSTECH and the Korean Intellectual Property (IP) Office. Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, are typical examples of IP-based entrepreneurs, creating future growth industries based on intellectual properties.POSTECH launched the Education Center for IP-based Entrepreneurs last September with cooperation and supervision of the IP Office, and the opening ceremony was held on Jan. 27 in POSTECH. The establishment progress report, congratulatory speech of

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs President Jeong H. Kim receives an honorary doctorate on Feb. 17, at the 2009 commencement ceremony.President Kim immigrated to the United States in 1975 when he was in the second grade of middle school. He overcame the hardships of adolescence and graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. After that he sold his venture business to Lucent technology at the price of $1,100,000,000. He was the first Korean to rank in Forbes’ list of 400 richest people in U.S. In 2005 he was appointed as the first Korean to be the president of Bell Labs and d

A research team led by professor Kwang-Jae Kim of the Department of Industrial and Management Engineering received the 2009 Best Paper Award from the Asia-Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems (APIEMS) which was held in Kokura, Japan.Professor Kim’s team collaborating with professor Hong Yoo-Suk of Seoul National University and professor Kwangtae Park of Korea University, caught great attention by proposing an Ideation Support System for Product-Service System Development.The research team analyzed 90 cases related to Product-Service System s (PSS) to propose a system that will

For a faster and more precise security management, POSTECH staffmembers will serve as personal guides. POSTECH made agreement with subcontractors and appointed 106 employees as campus guides.These new guides will serve to solve unstable factors or report them, not only completing their original tasks. In addition, if in need, guides help visitors or members with what they need. Guides will receive monthly education.In connection, Lee Sang-pil, an administration officer of POSTECH, said, “Greater development of the campus is expected from careful management on security services”. To contact cam

The first report of a transporter carrying abscisic acid (ABA), synthesized in plants undergoing stresses like climate and salinity, was done by POSTECH faculties. So, a new possibility of modifying plants to adapt to harsh environments can be suggested. In the process, the discovered transporter (ABCG40) genes translate ABCG40 proteins which quickly absorb ABA into cells, activating stress-tolerant genes inside cells. Professor Youngsook Lee of the Department of Life Science directed the research and it was presented in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science of the United States of Am

The New Year of 2010, the Year of Tiger has begun. We now put behind us an arduous year full of hardships resulting from the global economic crisis. I hope that the New Year will bring about many cheering and comforting news.With the start of the New Year, only 10 years remain until 2020, the pledged year for the achievement of POSTECH Vision 2020. As you may be well aware, POSTECH Vision 2020 was declared in April 2006, in commemoration of the University’s 20th Anniversary, to affirm Postechians as well as alumni, parents, and the world, our determination not to falter and grow complacent in

The Research teams of POSTECH accomplished the outstanding feat of winning two of Korea’s largest invention exhibitions.The Korea Invention Patent Exhibition 2009 (KINPEX 2009) and the Seoul International Invention Fair 2009 (SIIF 2009) were held in PACIFIC HALL COEX, Seoul from Dec. 3 to 7. Professor Sungjee Kim of the Department of Chemistry won the bronze prize in KINPEX 2009 and Professor Cha Hyung Joon of Department of Chemical Engineering won the Semi-Grand Prize in SIIF2009 and the medal from International Warsaw Invention Show (IWIS) 2009. Professor Moon Won Kyu of Department of Mechan

Professor Kweon Soo-Ok of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences won the Best Paper Award in the Applied Linguistics Association of Korea (ALAK). ALAK held its “2009 Applied Linguistics Association Conference” in Chung-Ang University on Dec. 5 and presented the Best Paper Award to Prof. Kweon.Prof. Kweon read a paper titled “Resolving PP(Prepositional Phrase) Attachment Ambiguity in Lexically Biased Constructions in L2 Sentence Processing” in Applied Linguistics published by ALAK. This paper drew attention for the point that she used an on-line method introduced recently as an experime