The eight bridges on the campus of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology remain unnamed. The reason? It has yet to produce the Nobel Prize winners after whom each of them will be named.

That goal may seem far-fetched for a school that is only five years old. But its president is confident, given its fast progress so far in university ranking, faculty quality and education programs.

Opened in 2009, the state-run university was ranked among the top nine Korean universities in 2012 by the Nature Publishing Index in terms of research articles published in 18 prestigious journals.

The number of students and faculty members have grown from 500 and 39, respectively, to more than 3,800 and over 200 this year.

The school has already secured 200 billion won ($188 million) of development funding from the Ulsan City and Ulju County governments.

Its president, Cho Moo-je, said UNIST aims to rank within the world’s top 10 research schools by 2030.

“But our ultimate goal is neither just to climb up to a high rank nor to just produce a bunch of research papers. We want to develop technology and undertake advanced research for the prosperity of humankind,” Cho told The Korea Herald in a recent interview.

The president said the school has focused on selected research areas to cultivate comparative technologies, namely new materials and renewable energy.

Its researchers, in particular, have made great strides in secondary battery technology.

Currently, electric vehicles use batteries that usually take hours to recharge. But UNIST professor Jaephil Cho and his research team have developed new technology for a secondary battery that can be fully recharged in just a few minutes, according to the university.

“This new technology can be used with all the different sizes of batteries and in different devices such as smartphones and laptops,” the president explained.

A local company in Ulsan has already bought the patent for the core technology for 6.4 billion won ($6 million), he added.

Prof. Cho Jae-phil is one of the top-ranking scholars Cho strove to attract and who are now the most valuable contributors to the school’s rapid growth.

The professor was teaching at one of the nation’s leading engineering schools and initially turned down Cho’s request to join the completely new university.

“We were quite new, and back then nobody knew about our university,” he recalled.

But the president did not give up, as he believed second battery technology was one of the core future technologies and exactly what UNIST needed to develop.

After a guarantee of tenure, a promise of the best possible research environment and evidence of the president’s sincere commitment to future technologies, he finally agreed to a third offer.

Cho has been actively recruiting big-name academics, including Professor Konstantin S. Novoselov, the 2010 Nobel laureate in physics; Marc J. Madou, a leading organic scientist; and Lee Jae-sung, a top energy chemist.

Its professors are also relatively young, with an average age of 40. 


Another key to UNIST’s rapid growth, the president said, is its unique education system.

All freshmen take general courses for one year before they decide what to major in their second year. They are also required to complete at least two majors to graduate.

Also, although UNIST is a research-oriented school, students are required to take more than seven classes in the arts, humanities and social sciences departments, according to the president.

“We advise students to learn to play at least one musical instrument during their time here. We have even hired two music professors to achieve this,” he added, noting that the ultimate goal is to produce globally competitive scientists.

“We encourage our students to study with an interdisciplinary focus to become globally competitive scientists,” he said.

“We want, for instance, to see a chemistry major study finance and accounting and later to become an expert in oil marketing.”

To foster students’ global competitiveness, all courses are taught exclusively in English. Cho noted that the school benchmarked the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Despite its short history ― HKUST admitted its first students in 1991 ― the school ranked 34th in this year’s QS World University Rankings, making it the second-best in Asia after the University of Tokyo.

An English-speaking environment, Cho said, is one of key contributors to HKUST’s growth.

“So we’re looking to expand the English-only scheme to not only classrooms but also to the entire campus. We’re considering using English in all administrative work,” he said.

Apart from establishing a global learning environment, Cho added that his long-term goal is to develop a “UNIST Valley,” its answer to Silicon Valley, to connect UNIST’s R & D research directly to the industries in Ulsan, one of the nation’s leading manufacturing centers.

But before that, UNIST aims to expand its campus by 101,000 square meters by 2016, building massive new research buildings and other infrastructure, drawing from a budget of 200 billion won.

“UNIST first started with a total investment of 250 billion won, so you can see how big the project is. By 2016, we’ll have new state-of-the-art research buildings and exciting new labs,” he said.

He expects the current plans to reduce the amount of time it takes to name the school’s bridges.

“I hope and believe UNIST will cultivate breakthrough research and produce a Nobel Prize winner. This is our ultimate goal,” he said.

Profile of Cho Moo-je

● Cho has served as UNIST’s inaugural president since 2007. He began his second four-year term in 2011.

● He worked previously as a professor and also president of Gyeongsang National University from 1971-2007.

● Cho also served as a chairman of the presidential advisory council on education, science and technology from 2011-2012.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)