Elice, a digital education practice platform, donated 300 million KRW of development funds to the School of Computing. The signing ceremony for the agreement was held at Dogok Campus in Seoul on the anniversary of the founding of Elice. Three executives, Jae Won Kim, Soo In Kim, and Jung Guk Park — the CEO, CPO, and CTO of Elice, respectively  — along with employees from KAIST attended the donation ceremony.

Elice was created as a start-up from an artificial intelligence lab at KAIST, whose research revolved around applying AI technology to education. It expanded its business to an academic course practice platform, with “Introduction to Programming” (CS101) at KAIST being one of the courses that use this platform. This year, Elice was nominated as a “Global ICT Future Unicorn Company” by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and it has taken the lead in innovating software education. It has provided its digital education service to more than 100 universities, the Korean government, public institutions, and private companies such as SK and LG, showing rapid growth with 200,000 people completing the curriculums and achieving an average completion rate of more than 80%. Using its open platform, users can practice coding by simply logging in without extra environment settings. Elice has increased educational efficiency by optimizing the learning platform and creating a practice-oriented curriculum based on interactive learning.

Elice decided to donate development funds to KAIST since it is an educational organization that strives to foster software related educators to solve the educator shortage. The donation will be used to expand the facilities of the School of Computing in order to provide a greater number of laboratories and classrooms. Jae Won Kim, the CEO of Elice, remarked, “I am pleased to contribute to educational innovation by supporting future talent and educators through this donation. I want to expand our educational infrastructure to encourage active communication between educators and learners, to resolve educational gaps and to create a virtuous cycle of the improved quality of education.”

In response, President Kwang Hyung Lee said, “I am very thrilled to see a start-up founded from KAIST grow into such a great company that provides educational service to our society. We will use this donation to create a campus where more talented people are given a chance to develop various technologies and ideas.” As KAIST has continuously cultivated talented people such as the founders of Naver or Nexon, it is expected that support for KAIST educators and students will be of great help for the growth of the Korean economy and society.