On August 26, KAIST held a ceremony for the establishment of Korea’s first Graduate School of Convergence Security. Being part of the 14 universities that participated in the “Competitive Security Project for Convergence Security in Regional Strategy Industry” — which began in March and ended in May — KAIST, Chonman University, and Korea University were selected for the smart city, smart factory, and new energy fields, respectively.

The competition, which was held by the Ministry of Science and ICT, aimed to determine suitability of the graduate schools of multiple institutions for convergence security in preparation for the upcoming widespread use of 5G technology. The participating schools were evaluated based on their education, research, industry-academia collaboration, and plans for the new graduate school, among others. The selected schools will form a consortium of around 50 domestic and international leading companies, institutions, and local governments for a core role in human resource training and will create an appropriate ecosystem through curriculum management and industry-university collaboration projects. During a six year period, the selected universities will receive a total of 40 billion KRW, beginning with 500 million KRW this year and 700 million KRW annually from 2020.

Along with the ceremony, which was attended by more than 100 people, a technology transfer conference was held to introduce this year’s latest security-related developments. Furthermore, several new developments such as the “Race Bug Detection through Fuzzing” (Professor Insik Shin), “Data-Plane extensions for SDN Security Service” (Professor Seung-Won Shin), and “Automatic Analysis of Cellular Networks” (Professor Yongdae Kim) were introduced.

The Graduate School of Convergence Security plans to use the entire KAIST campus as a testbed for a smart city, such that the techniques for prevention and reaction to security issues can be directly applied and observed in a controlled environment. Furthermore, the testbed will act as a region-based research facility for a consortium of 16 leading companies and organizations, named “Security@Kaist”.

Professor Insik Shin stated that the concept of a smart city is a “result of the convergence of ICT technology that is realized based on various advanced ICT technologies” and remained positive that with the opening of this graduate school, “Korea will be able to secure competitiveness to lead the convergence security R&D field, and contribute to fostering talented people and creating jobs.”

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