The
big-budget conference circuit with high-profile international speakers
hits Korea in October. This year, the Korea Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology (KAIST), in Daejon, has got in early with a
series of activities straddling the weekend, reflecting the dynamic
leadership of the President, Dr Suh Nam-Pyo.
Suh was brought
in from MIT, in succession to physics Nobel Laureate Robert B Laughlin
of Stanford University. There is no doubting the ambition, imagination
and verve the Koreans bring to the party.
KAIST itself was launched in the early 1970s with the aim of becoming a
leading research university. Now it has acquired a KAIST within KAIST
in the form of the KAIST Institute (KI). Korean academics often joke at
how creative their country is in creating new institutions to foster
creativity.
Certainly KI touches several hot-button topics - eight in all and some
with catchy names: BioCentury, NanoCentury, EcoEnergy, Entertainment
Energy. Others are more prosaic in comparison: IT Convergence, Optical
Science and Technology, Urban Space and Systems, Design of Complex
Systems...
The conference running Thursday and Friday, and reconvening last
Tuesday, was aimed at showcasing where these groups are heading.
Interlaced with the conference was the First International Presidential
Forum on Global Universities held at a major hotel in Seoul, bringing
together some 80 university leaders from 20 institutions in a score of
countries.
Participants considered the benefits of roaming professorships, the
potential of dual degrees, and making the most of existing networks in
sessions led by university heads from three continents - John Anderson,
of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Paul Greenfield, of the
University of Queensland, and Lars Pallesen, of the Danish Technical
University.
A more unusual draw was the prospect of joint research ventures with
NASA. The Korean Prime Minister, Dr Han Seung-Soo, was on hand at
dinner with a concluding speech.
KAIST President Suh led the forum on sharing facilities and expertise.
If you can lay on NASA and the Prime Minister, it is clear that KAIST
has much to share. But there are internal challenges, too, as the KI
symposium seemed strangely detached from the forum, and not so much the
demonstration of the prospects for sharing that it might have been.
Still, it is early days for KI, since Tuesday also saw multiple
ground-breaking ceremonies for the building to house it. Watch this
space!
* Douglas Rogers works on international science and technology
policy and funding. He has been a frequent visitor to Korea since 1997.
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