On September 17, KAIST held the “KAIST Core Tech Transfer Day” to share four of its most cutting-edge technologies to domestic companies at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in Seoul.
KAIST holds the annual event to share top technologies directly related to leading industries in Korea to ensure the competitiveness and job creation in domestic companies. The third event of its kind, this year’s “KAIST Core Tech Transfer Day” focused more on technologies related to advanced materials as the South Korea-Japan “trade war” started to reach its peak last month.
The recent economic conflict between South Korea and Japan can be traced back to Japan’s decision to remove South Korea from its “whitelist”, which restricted exports of key raw materials for semiconductor manufacturing.
KAIST disclosed four technologies to make Korean companies less dependent on Japan. These include “colorless polyimide” (Professor Sang Yul Kim, Department of Chemistry), “nondestructive testing device” (Professor Jung-Ryul Lee, Department of Aerospace Engineering), “high capacity rechargeable battery” (Professor Do Kyung Kim, Department of Materials Science and Engineering), and “photoresist” (Professor Jin Baek Kim, Department of Chemistry).
Other professors disclosed their respective research results beneficial to many industries. “Higher quality video streaming service” (Professor Dongsu Han, School of Electrical Engineering), “brain-computer interface technique” (Professor Sang Wan Lee, Department of Bio and Brain Engineering), “non-toxic UV-blocker” (Professor Sung Oh Cho, Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering), “high sensitivity color-detecting sensor platform” (Professor Il-Doo Kim, Department of Materials Science and Engineering), and “silicon-pocket rechargeable battery” (Professor Jeung Ku Kang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering) were five technologies shared in the event.
Officials from approximately 200 companies attended the event to take a deeper look into how they can use this information to prepare for the trade war. A fruitful Q&A session regarding the details of the research followed later in the evening.
“As the significance of open-source technology rises with trade restrictions from Japan, we have carefully disclosed research results viable for commercialization,” said Hyun Wook Park, KAIST’s Vice President for Research. “Since 2017, we have already seen six successful cases of technology transfer to local firms, and KAIST will continue to cooperate with industries to increase their competitiveness.”