2020 New Year's Address
2020 New Year's Address
  • Moo Hwan Kim, President of POSTECH
  • 승인 2020.01.05 19:09
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Let us build POSTECH's great future together.

The new morning of 2020, the Year of the White Rat (Gyeongjanyeon), has dawned. I would like to wish all members of the POSTECH community a hopeful and bright new year like the sun that first rises from Homigot and radiates throughout Korea.

Last year, POSTECH took another step closer to its founding goal of being a “university that contributes to the nation and humanity” with the passionate dedication and hard work of our members. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the professors, staff, students, and partner employees who have done their best in their respective places.

In 2019, we introduced the blockchain technology on campus for the first time in Korea, laying the foundation for our students to experience and learn it firsthand. We will continue to create such programs so they learn new technologies on their own. This is the base to strengthen self-directedness, the most essential trait for our students who will live through a future so radically changing, that it is being called a revolution.

We have welcomed new members of faculty who will lead education and research for a brighter future of POSTECH. The recognition for the research excellence and numerous awards have been a great joy to our members and to those who love our school. Likewise, the news of POSTECH as the most innovative university in Asia by Reuters was deeply encouraging, especially in reflecting on our founding tenets.

My beloved POSTECH family!

It is undeniable that new technologies will enter our realm in 2020. Rapid advances and uncertainties of the future can be sources of fear for us. However, correct forecast and preparation can ultimately deflate these fears as the Chinese idiom, “Yubimuhwan” (“Preparedness averts peril.”), teaches us.

To lay the foundation for a start-up ecosystem through education, research, and innovation in commercialization, our school established an elevated level of industry-academia-research partnership with POSCO and Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology (RIST). As Korea's first such unit, the cooperation between these institutions will be the basis for advancement in both basic science and engineering as well as greater social value creation.

From 2020, AI-based education will be mandatory for undergraduate students, and AI graduate school will open in March to raise the next generation of experts. As AI is now widely used as a language in basic science and engineering, we ask for your support and active participation.

Above all, the matter of most significance is to establish the middle and long-term growth plans for POSTECH's next 50 years and to attract professors and future talents who will carry out those plans. It is not redundant to also emphasize the importance of enhancing the infrastructure and administrative policies so that our community can focus on education and research in a pleasant environment.

In 2020, let us work together for the education that students need, spread the excellence-based research culture on campus, and create a university that can contribute to the advancement of our nation and humanity through greater social value creation. As emphasized in my inaugural address, POSTECH's greatest strength lies in the “power of together.”

My best wishes for a year of health, hope, and happiness for you and your families in 2020.

Happy New Year!

 

January 1, 2020