The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is a national

research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kn ...

located in

Daedeok Innopolis Daedeok Innopolis, formerly known as Daedeok Science Town, is the research and development district in the Yuseong-gu district in Daejeon, South Korea. Daedeok Innopolis grew out of the research cluster established by President Park Chunghee ...

, Daejeon,

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the nation's first public, research-oriented science and engineering institution. KAIST is considered to be one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. KAIST has been internationally accredited in business education, and hosting the Secretariat of the Association of Asia-Pacific Business Schools (AAPBS). KAIST has 10,504 full-time students and 1,342 faculty researchers (as of Fall 2019 Semester) and had a total budget of US$765 million in 2013, of which US$459 million was from research contracts. In 2007, KAIST partnered with international institutions and adopted dual degree programs for its students. Its partner institutions include the

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fir ...

, Carnegie Mellon University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Technical University of Berlin, and the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied science, applied and Natural sci ...

History

The institute was founded in 1971 as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS) by a loan of US$6 million (US$38 million 2019) from the

United States Agency for International Development The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 b ...

(USAID) and supported by President Park Chung-Hee. The institute's academic scheme was mainly designed by Frederick E. Terman, then vice president of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, and Chung Geum-mo, a professor at the Polytechnic Institution of Brooklyn. The institute's two main functions were to train advanced scientists and engineers and develop a structure of graduate education in the country. Research studies had begun by 1973 and undergraduates studied for bachelor's degrees by 1984. In 1981 the government merged the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) to form the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST. Due to differing research philosophies, KIST and KAIST split in 1989. In the same year KAIST and the Korea Institute of Technology (KIT) combined and moved from

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...

to the Daedeok Science Town in Daejeon. The first act of President Suh upon his inauguration in July 2006 was to lay out the KAIST Development Plan. The ‘KAIST Development Five-Year Plan’ was finalized on February 5, 2007 by KAIST Steering Committee. The goals of KAIST set by Suh were to become one of the best science and technology universities in the world, and to become one of the top-10 universities by 2011. In January 2008, the university dropped its full name, ''Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology'', and changed its official name to only ''KAIST''.

Timeline

Academics

Admission to KAIST is based on overall grades, grades on math and science courses, recommendation letters from teachers, study plan, personal statements, and other data, and does not rely on a standardized test conducted by the university. In 2014, the acceptance rate for local students was 14.9%, and for international students at 13.2%. Full scholarships are given to all students including international students in the bachelor, master and doctorate courses. Doctoral students are given military-exemption benefits from South Korea's

compulsory military service Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day ...

. Up to 80% of courses taught in KAIST are conducted in English. Undergraduate students can join the school through an “open major system” that allows students to take classes for three terms and then choose a discipline that suits their aptitude, and undergraduates are allowed to change their major anytime. KAIST has also produced many

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

s through the integrated master's and doctoral program and early-completion system. Students must publish papers in internationally renowned academic journals for graduation.

Students

KAIST produced 69,388 alumni from 1975 to 2021, with 19,457 bachelor's, 35,513 master's, and 14,418 doctorate degree holders. As of Spring 2021, 10,793 students were enrolled in KAIST with 3,605 bachelor's, 3,069 master's, 1,354 joint M.S.-Ph.D.'s, and 2,765 doctoral students. More than 70 percent of KAIST undergraduates come from specialized science high schools. 817 international students from 81 countries are studying at KAIST (as of spring semester 2021), making it one of the most ethnically diverse universities in the country.

Organization

Campus

KAIST has two campuses in Daejeon and one campus in Seoul. The university is mainly located in the Daedeok Science Town in the city of Daejeon, 150 kilometers south of the capital

. Daedeok is also home to some 50 public and private research institutes, universities such as CNU and high-tech venture capital companies. Most lectures, research activities, and housing services are located in the Daejeon main campus. It has a total of 29 dormitories. Twenty-three dormitories for male students and four dormitories for female students are located on the outskirts of the campus, and two apartments for married students are located outside the campus. The Seoul campus is the home of the Business Faculty of the university. The graduate schools of finance, management and information & media management are located there. The total area of the Seoul campus is . The Munji campus, the former campus of

Information and Communications University Information and Communications University (ICU), established in 1998, was a Korean university focused primarily on research and engineering in the field of information technology. It was located in the city of Daejeon and comprised an engine ...

until its merger with KAIST, is located ca. away from the main campus. It has two dormitories, one for undergraduate students and the other for graduate students. The Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research is located here doing particle and nuclear physics related to

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ...

and the Rare Isotope Science Project has the Superconducting Radio Frequency test facility.

Main library

The KAIST main library was established in 1971 as KAIS library, and it went through a merge and separation process with KIST library. It merged with KIT in March 1990. A contemporary 5 story building was constructed as the main library, and it is being operated with an annex library. The library uses the American LC Classification Schedule. The library underwent expansion and remodeling, which finished in 2018, to include conference rooms, collaboration rooms, and media rooms.

Event

KAIST's Seokrim Taeulje is a festival held by KAIST for three days every spring semester. The festival preparation committee under the undergraduate student council will be in charge of planning and execution, various food booths and experience booths will be opened, and stage events such as club performances and a song festival will be held. Also called the Cherry Blossom Festival, students eat strawberries on the law

Research

Seven KAIST Institutes (KIs) have been set up: the KI for the BioCentury, the KI for Information Technology Convergence, the KI for the Design of Complex Systems, the KI for Entertainment Engineering, the KI for the NanoCentury, the KI for Eco-Energy, and the KI for Urban Space and Systems. Each KI is operated as an independent research center at the level of a college, receiving support in terms of finance and facilities. In terms of ownership of intellectual property rights, KAIST holds 2,694 domestic patents and 723 international patents so far.

Electric vehicles

Researchers at KAIST have developed the Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), a technique of powering vehicles through cables underneath the surface of the road via non-contact magnetic charging (a power source is placed underneath the road surface and power is wirelessly picked up on the vehicle itself). In July 2009 the researchers successfully supplied up to 60% power to a bus over a gap of from a power line embedded in the ground using power supply and pick up technology developed in-house.

Autonomous arms

In February 2018,

the Korea Times ''The Korea Times'' is the oldest of three English-language newspapers published daily in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the ''Hankook Ilbo'', a major Korean language daily; both are owned by Dongwha Enterprise, a wood-based manufacturer ...

published an article which stated that KAIST was starting an AI weapons research project together with the Korean

arms manufacturer The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and servi ...

Hanwa. The allegations were of developing lethal autonomous weapons with Hanwa. This has led to researchers from 30 countries boycotting KAIST, which has denied existence of the program.

Academic rankings

In 2019

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corp ...

named KAIST the 34th most innovative university in the world and the 2nd most innovative university in the Asia Pacific region. In 2022

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for th ...

ranked KAIST 41st overall in the world and 12th within Asia, coming 16th in Material Sciences and 16th in Engineering and Technology. In the 2009 THE-QS World University Rankings (in 2010

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' (often referred to as the THE Rankings) is an annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarel ...

and

parted ways to produce separate rankings) for Engineering & IT, the University was placed 21st in the world and 1st in Korea and was placed 69th overall. KAIST was again recognized as a number one University in Korea by

JoongAng Ilbo ''The JoongAng'', formally known as ''JoongAng Ilbo'', is a South Korean daily newspaper published in Seoul, South Korea. It is one of the three biggest newspapers in South Korea, and a newspaper of record for South Korea. The paper also p ...

Review. In the year of 2009, KAIST's department of industrial design has also been listed in the top 30 Design Schools by Business Week. KAIST ranked the best university in

Republic of Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its ea ...

and the 7th university in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

in the Top 100 Asian Universities list, the first regional ranking issued by THE-QS World Rankings. * QS University Subject Rankings (2017): ** 13th, materials science ** 15th,

civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

and structural engineering ** 15th,

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

** 15th,

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

** 17th,

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

** 18th,

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

** 33rd,

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

information systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

** 44th, Physics & Astronomy ** 47th,

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

ranked KAIST the 3rd best university in the world under the age of 50 years in its 2015 league table.

Notable faculty and staff

* Soon-dal Choi, electrical engineer; successfully developed and launched a satellite, KITSAT-3 * Dong-ho Cho, electrical engineer; developed online electric vehicle (OLEV), listed on

Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Ma ...

's top fifty inventions of 2010 * Jun-ho Choi, discoverer of hSNF5 body protein involved in reproduction of

Papilloma virus ''Papillomaviridae'' is a family of non- enveloped DNA viruses whose members are known as papillomaviruses. Several hundred species of papillomaviruses, traditionally referred to as "types", have been identified infecting all carefully inspected ...

* Yang-Kyu Choi, developed world's smallest terabyte

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use ...

* Cho Zang-hee, developed PET Imaging while at Colombia, developed Imaging for MRI/PET/CAT at KAIS, Later KAIST * James D. Cumming, Foreign Guest Professor, published first paper with Cho Zang-hee on MRI Imaging resolution improvement. * Heun Lee, identified mechanism behind hydrogen storage in ice particles * Ji-O Lee, chemist; identified structure of protein causing

sepsis Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is follo ...

* Sang-yup Lee, developed chip to diagnose Wilson's disease * Gi-hyong Gho, mathematician; developed world's first public key crypto system (PKCS) technology * Jong-kyong Jeong, identified cause of

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms beco ...

* Eunseong Kim, physicist; discovered new evidence for the existence of a

supersolid In condensed matter physics, a supersolid is a spatially ordered material with superfluid properties. In the case of helium-4, it has been conjectured since the 1960s that it might be possible to create a supersolid. Starting from 2017, a defin ...

* Jin-woo Kim, identified the cause behind senile retinal degeneration disease * Se-jin Kwan, aerospace engineer; successfully developed and tested a moon lander * Chang Hee Nam, physicist; developed

attosecond An attosecond (symbol as) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 1×10−18 of a second (one quintillionth of a second). For comparison, an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 billion years.

pulse generation and compression technology * Gweng-su Rhim, developed next generation Transparent Resistive Random Access Memory (TRRAM) * Seung-man Yang, developed new photonics crystal-based optofluidic technology * Yoon-tae Young, physicist; first to observe proper function of complexin protein to control neuron communication * Giltsu Choi, photobiologist; identified key genes regulating seed germination in response to light in plants. * Dan Keun Sung, electronic engineer

Notable alumni

Academia

* Ryong Ryoo, chemist

Science and technology

Yi So-Yeon Yi So-yeon (born June 2, 1978) is a South Korean astronaut and biotechnologist who became the first Korean to fly in space. Upon return from her mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Yi continued as a KARI researcher attendin ...

, first Korean to fly in space * Tony Kim, founder of ProtoPie

Business

* Sung-kyun Na, founder and CEO of Neowiz, Korea's first internet supplier (KAIST graduate school) * Jungju Kim, NEXON CEO * Hae-jin Lee, Next Human Network ( NHN Corporation) * Chang-han Kim, PUBG CEO

Entertainment

* So-jung Kim, Singer * Jang-won Lee, Singer ( Peppertones) * Jae-pyung Shin, Singer ( Peppertones) * So-hee Yoon, Actress

Notes and references

* The Times-QS World University Rankings 2009 - KAIST 69th overall, 21st in the field of Engineering/Technology

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kaist Daejeon National universities and colleges in South Korea Engineering universities and colleges in South Korea 1971 establishments in South Korea Educational institutions established in 1971

History

Timeline

Academics

Academics

Students

Organization

Campus

Main library

Event

Research

Electric vehicles

Autonomous arms

Academic rankings

Notable faculty and staff

Notable alumni

Academia

Science and technology

Business

Entertainment

Notes and references

See also

External links