Three projects teams of Kookmin University were finally selected for ‘BK21 PLUS (Brain Korea 21 Program for Leading Universities & Students)’ supported by the Ministry of Education and National Research Foundation of Korea.

The Ministry of Education selected 54 project teams from 41 universities among 550 university project teams nationwide and announced the winners on October 31st. This project was promoted to foster talent with masters or doctoral degrees specialized in national development strategy including high value-added industries like cultural contents, design, tourism, and health as well as information protection. For the selected project teams, total of 8.6 billion won for this year and about 17.1 billion won of budget will be supported from next year to provide stable research budget to about 1,000 students in masters or doctoral courses.

Except for Chonnam National University where four project teams were selected, Kookmin University realized splendid achievement with the selection of three project groups out of the university project groups nationwide. There are four universities that were supported for two project teams while thirty three universities were supported for a project team. 

About BK21 PLUS (Brain Korea 21 Program for Leading Universities & Students)

• “Expert cultivation project specialized in SSEV” is led by School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (leader: Jun-seok Park, participating professor: Ha-ryeong O, Seong-su Hong, Seon-ung Choi, and Ji-hye Kim) and Graduate School of Automotive Engineering (participating professor: Yeon-sik Gang and Seong-hwan Sin). It plans to cultivate convergence and integrated talent that will lead the security-smart electric car industry by newly establishing ‘cooperative course of security-smart electric car.’

• “Expert cultivation project specialized in smart energy engineering for Korean-style ODA businesses” plans to cultivate topnotch experts in energy engineering that can contribute to the Korean ODA projects led by the Graduate School of Mechanical Systems Engineering (leader: Hwa-taek Han, participating professor: Tae-yong Jeong, Do-yeong Han, Hyeon-guk Myeong, Byeong-ha Gang, Seok-hyeon Kim, Gyeong-geun Park, Jung-gyeong Kim, Dong-hun Sin, Jun An, and Hui-jun Yi).

• “Expert cultivation project specialized in future financial security” is jointly led by the School of Mathematics (leader: Ok-yeon Yi, participating professor: Ju-seong Gang, Dong-guk Han, Yong-jin Yeom, and Jong-seong Kim), Graduate School of Business IT (participating professor: Eun-mi Choi and Su-hyeon Park), and School of Business Administration (participating professor: Do-hyeon Kim and Yong-jae Gwon). It plans to cultivate experts specialized in financial and information security to actively cope with the future information technology environment in the financial industry by establishing ‘a course of financial information security’ and combining the idea of finance and information protection.

Kookmin University came up with splendid achievement as five project teams of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Bio & Nano Chemistry, Graduate School of Business IT, and Graduate School of Techno Design were selected for the BK21 PLUS projects in last August, and such achievement is understood as the outcome of extensive research and educational competence that have been cultivated through specialized education as well as the excellent results obtained by 100 thousand professors, employees, and students of Kookmin University who turned the crisis into an opportunity. “Thank you very much” for the effort and devotion by all Kookmin people.