KAIST Institute for NanoCentury (KINC) hosted its seventh annual KINC Fusion Research Award, dedicated to commemorating and encouraging professors and graduate students in collaborative research, on March 22 at the KI Building (E4). The award celebrated the accomplishments of two research groups selected through a rigorous application process with emphasis on creativity and confluence of diverse scientific and engineering fields. KINC presented, in addition to its awards, rewards to the primary and corresponding authors of the two groups.

The first winning team, led by Professor Byeong-Soo Bae from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Associate Professor Doh Chang Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, had manufactured a quantum dot/siloxane composite film that was extraordinarily durable against oxidation even in high temperatures and moisture levels. The research was published on the Journal of the American Chemical Society on December 21, 2016. For more information about the study, consult the March issue of The KAIST Herald.

The second team succeeded in thermally separating silicon carbide (SiC) through lasers, thus contributing to the investigation on the generation of graphene. Furthermore, the study heralded future applications in creating ultra-thin nanomaterials. Principal authors included Associate Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Associate Professor Sung-Yool Choi from the School of Electrical Engineering, whose study was published in Nature Communications on November 30, 2016.

Ever since its foundation in 2006, KINC strived to establish KAIST as a convergent institution of the most topical nano-research; over 80 professors participate in the collective endeavor to make KAIST competitive in the international sphere. KINC Chairman Hee Tae Jung expressed his joy and anticipation in what the award represents: “I am quite elated that KAIST has produced a significant number of internationally- recognized research and I hope to foster further growth in collaborative disciplines within the KAIST academia by extending the Fusion Research Award to a wider range of studies in the future and molding a nurturing environment for the researchers.”