KAIST - History

History

KAIST was established under the name of Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS) under a special law on 16 February 1971, as the first research oriented graduate school in science and engineering in Korea. In 1989, KAIST established the education/research system of special talents in science and engineering fields in bachelor, master and doctoral degrees. Students accepted into the program were exempt from military duty, but required to remain in Korea for 5 years following graduation, to prevent brain drain. All other Koreans of college age are required to do military duty unless they are in college; in that case they must report for military duty soon afterward.

Over the past 30 years, KAIST has produced 8,453 bachelors, 17,762 masters, 6,726 doctorate holders (doctors under 30 years of age were 2,920, 43.4%) giving a total of 32,941 alumni. The thesis published in SCI (US, Science and Technology Quotation Thesis Search) journals reached approximately 4 articles per each faculty member, and the commissioned research grant was approximately 200 million won per each facility.

The National Nano Lab was established in 2002 and the KAIST Institute in 2006.

The first act of President Suh upon his inauguration in July 2006 was to lay out the KAIST Development Plan. The ‘KAIST Development Five-Year Plan’ was finalized on February 5, 2007 by KAIST Steering Committee. The goals of KAIST set by Suh were to become one of the best science and technology universities in the world, and to become one of the top-10 universities by 2011. In January 2008, the university dropped its full name, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and changed its official name to only KAIST.