On October 17, Samsung Heavy Industries and KAIST celebrated their 20th anniversary of university-industry cooperation. The ceremony was held at the KAIST Mechanical Engineering building (N7) conference room with over 30 attendees, including the Dean of KAIST Department of Mechanical Engineering, Choongsik Bae, and Head of the Samsung Heavy Industries Research Institute, Jong-Soo Seo.

The cooperation between the two organizations started in 1995 with advancing shipbuilding and marine technology research. The agenda between KAIST and Samsung Heavy Industries include appointing advisory professors for technological support, on-site practical academic courses, and joint research for new business projects. Through the program, Samsung Heavy Industries effectively prevented bottlenecks in ongoing projects and KAIST managed to raise personnel with on-site practical skills.

This KAIST-Samsung cooperation has accomplished a lot over the past 20 years. A small liquid natural gas (LNG) research project that initiated in 2006 with a nominal 5 million Korean Won worth of funding increased to a 30-billion-Korean-Won project over the course of the next five years. The funding eventually brought about a novel LNG dual wall storage system, drastically reducing ship construction cost. The technology was certified and assessed by Lloyd’s Register, an engineering firm from the United Kingdom. The cooperation received recognition in 2003 in the form of a Presidential Award at the University-Industry Cooperation Competition organized by the Federation of Korean Industries. Samsung and KAIST plan to continue expanding their current academic program as the leading university-industry role model in Korea.

Professor Bae said, “The cooperation focuses on and receives very high satisfaction from providing solutions to fieldwork industrial problems.” He stated, “Through this cooperation, we were able to maintain our academic-industrial partnership even during the IMF financial crisis.” The Dean elaborated, “The program will be strengthened to become a good role model that contributes to the shipbuilding and offshore industry of Korea.”