The president of KAIST, Sung-Mo Kang, has become the 11th member of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) International Board.

MIPT International Board was created in 2013, with the primary objective being “the integration of MIPT as an inheritor of original Soviet Science into the world’s academic community”. The first meeting of the board was held on February 14 in Zurich, Switzerland. To support the internationalization of MIPT, the board has announced that it will carry out several main tasks: approving strategic initiatives implementations, accumulating foreign experience of the university development, promoting MIPT in the international community, accelerating MIPT integration into international research and educational programs, and enhancing the international competitiveness of MIPT.

The MIPT International Board currently consists of a total of eleven presidents and researchers from renowned universities or research institutes around the world. The board is chaired by Leo Rafael Reif, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Professor Carlo Rubbia, a Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1984, President Jaques Biot from École Polytechnique Paris, France, and President Ralph Eichler from the Zurich Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland, are also members of the board. President Kang is the first from an Asian university to join the board.

The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, founded in 1951, is a leading educational and research institution in Russia. It is well known for its educational principles designed to train highly qualified specialists in various fields of modern science and technology, ranging from theoretical and applied physics to biotechnology. Similar to KAIST, MIPT rigorously selects gifted students, provides extensive education in fundamentals and involves leading scientists in the students' education. The institute also emphasizes its use of the best research laboratories in the country as a medium for its education in an atmosphere of scientific discovery and innovation.