South Korean guest professors to visit STH
Two guest professors and four post doctors from South Korea will be employed this autumn at KTH School of Technology and Health, STH. The new collaboration with the university KAIST is enabled through a donation.
Four million Swedish crowns from last year’s 70 million donation to STH by the couple Rune and Kerstin Jonasson were earmarked for supporting research exchange with South Korea.
With the purpose of initiating a collaboration, in the end of April STH’s dean Lars-Åke Brodin visited Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, KAIST, in the city of Daejeon in central South Korea. Also participating in the trip were professor Björn-Erik Erlandsson, STH’s administrative head Rikard Lingström and Mikael Grönkvist, who is doing research in environmental physiology at STH.
KTH and KAIST already have an existing general collaboration agreement, and representatives of the South Korean university visited KTH in March.
–I am very impressed of the high quality of research at KAIST, and of the well-developed infrastructure, says Lars-Åke Brodin after the visit to South Korea.
At a seminar, the representatives of KAIST and STH had the opportunity to present their respective research within medical engineering, which gave good insight into future areas of cooperation.
–It was a very well-organized symposium. We were able to identify several future research collaborations, within for example lifelong dwellings, medical images and sensors and extreme physiological problems, says Lars-Åke Brodin.
During the visit, it was determined that the endowment should be used to finance two guest professorships and three postdoctoral positions from KAIST. The posts are planned to be filled in the autumn.
–We will probably also build up a research branch at KAIST, as part of STH’s internationalisation work, says Lars-Åke Brodin.
