Korea - Collaboration

Oxford University has formal partnership and collaboration agreements with a number of key academic institutions in Korea including Yonsei University, Seoul National University and Korea University. In May 2006 the President of Korea Research Institute of Bioscience & Biotechnology (KRIBB) visited Oxford to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to support research projects between KRIBB and Oxford researchers in areas of mutual interest in bionanoscience. This MOU made Oxford part of KRIBB’s international collaboration with over 12 countries.

Oxford has also hosted frequent visits from partners in Korea. Over the past 5 years, Oxford has welcomed Professor Chang D Yoo, Associate Vice President of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST); the President of Korea University; Ambassador Yim, head of the Korea Foundation; and the President of Yonsei University, among others. In November 2012, the University enjoyed a visit from Suk-Hwan Park, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea.

Oxford academics collaborate with their Korean counterparts on a range of projects in the humanities, sciences and medicine, of which a few examples can be found below.

Collaborations in Electronic Engineering
In May 2012, the Department of Engineering Science hosted a special visit by Dr Chang-Gyu Hwang, the National Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Head of the Office of Strategic R & D Planning in the Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy. Dr Hwang was previously President and CEO of Samsung Electronics. It is hoped that Dr Hwang’s visit to Oxford will mark the start of a long term partnership with the University, facilitated by Professor Jong Min Kim who, after 17 years as Senior Vice-President of Samsung Electronics, was recently appointed as the new Chair of Electrical Engineering with the Department of Engineering Science.

As well as broad collaboration between institutions and departments, individual researchers at Oxford have been working on individual research projects with colleagues in South Korea. These take place across the breadth of the University’s departments.

•    The Glycobiology Institute has joined forces with the Scripps-Korea Antibody Institute (SKAI) to develop therapeutic antibodies to help fight cancer. The research will focus on generating antibodies to tackle carbohydrate structures found on cancer cells but not on healthy cells. The aim is to improve the antibodies’ natural ability to kill cancerous cells.

•    Nanotechnology: An international team of researchers including scientists from Oxford University and Korea University, as well as others, have discovered a new way of splitting layered materials, similar to graphite, into sheets of material just one atom thick. These  'nanosheets' can be made from a range of materials using mild ultrasonic pulses via a new method that is simple, fast, and inexpensive, and could be scaled up to work on an industrial scale. This could lead to revolutionary new electronic and energy storage technologies.

•    Biochemistry: Professor Anthony Watts in the Department of Biochemistry has collaborated over a decade with scientists at Hannam University and at KRIBB, where he has also acted as international adviser. Professor Watts also held the post of Distinguished Professor at Kyun-Won University, Seoul, Korea in 2004.

•    Astrophysics: Oxford astrophysicists have worked in collaboration with Yonsei University in Seoul and the department hosts a number of their graduate students. A joint Oxford-Korea research team won the Royal Astronomical Society 'Group Achievement Award for Astrophysics" in 2013.

•     CIONS is a non-profit organization composed of  Korean Science and Engineering students and researchers affiliated with the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, the University of Oxford, and the SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) at the University of Sussex. The aim of CIONS is to build an academic network among these four universities, as well as to strengthen the relationship among them. CIONS has organised regular academic conferences every four months, and has invited Korean researchers from each university to deliver presentations to discuss their innovative research topics. The 13th CIONS conference was held at the University of Oxford in June 2012.