KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and Lotte Group have launched a 'collaborative research hub for industry-academia cooperation' that will collaborate from basic and foundational research on future technologies to technology commercialization.
On the 13th, KAIST announced that it held the completion ceremony for the 'Lotte (LOTTE)xKAIST R&D Center' at its main campus in Daejeon on the 11th, with Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin and other Lotte Group officials in attendance.
The 'Lotte x KAIST R&D Center' was established based on a 10 billion won construction donation from Lotte Group and internal funds from KAIST's Department of Life Sciences and Chemical Engineering. The center aims to present an 'ultra-boundary collaboration' model that connects the university's research capabilities with the company's industrial and commercialization experience in one space.
The establishment of this R&D Center was promoted based on a decade-long cooperation between KAIST and Lotte Group. Since 2012, KAIST has operated commissioned master's and doctoral education programs for Lotte employees. In addition, it has cooperated with Lotte Chemical in areas such as technology transfer and personnel exchange across research and education.
The center was built on a scale of one basement floor, six above-ground floors, with a total floor area of approximately 4,298 square meters (about 1,300 pyeong). Open research spaces and collaboration areas were organically arranged to allow researchers to freely exchange ideas across disciplines and affiliations and conduct joint research. Collaboration research spaces that can be jointly utilized by Lotte and KAIST researchers were also prepared, along with a 'Shin Dong-bin Hall' for communication and exchange among researchers.
In the future, the center plans to focus its research on three areas: △bio-sustainability, △carbon-neutral energy/materials/processes, and △advanced food/healthcare, aiming to realize a sustainable future society.
Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin said, "I hope the R&D Center will become a hub for industry-academia cooperation that transcends the boundaries between schools and companies, creating even greater possibilities."
KAIST President Bae Chung-sik stated, "The completion of the building is not the end but the beginning of new collaboration. By combining KAIST's research capabilities with Lotte's industrial and commercialization strengths, we will connect laboratory ideas and technologies to real-world value in industry, creating new growth engines for South Korea and solutions for a sustainable future."
in TECH
