KAIST's New President Appointed: 'Venture Startup Pioneer' Honorary Professor Lee Kwang-hyung

Kwang-Hyung Lee, 17th President of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] Lee Kwang-hyung (67, photo), Professor Emeritus of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, has been appointed as the 17th President of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

The KAIST Board of Directors held the 271st extraordinary board meeting on the morning of the 18th at the 5th floor Sky Lounge of the Academic and Cultural Center at the Daejeon headquarters, where they elected Lee Kwang-hyung, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST, as the 17th President of KAIST.

The new president's appointment will be finalized after the consent of the Minister of Education and the approval of the Minister of Science and ICT, with a term of four years starting from the 23rd.

President Lee earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering from Seoul National University and KAIST, respectively, and obtained his master's and doctoral degrees in Computer Science from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) Lyon in France. Since being appointed as a professor in the Department of Computer Science at KAIST in 1985, he currently serves as an invited distinguished professor in the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering and the Graduate School of Future Strategy at MunSul.

During the 1990s, as a professor in the Department of Computer Science, he produced first-generation venture entrepreneurs such as Kim Jung-ju (Nexon), Kim Young-dal (IDIS), Shin Seung-woo (Neowiz), and Kim Jun-hwan (Olaworks), earning him the title of "Godfather of KAIST Venture Startups." He has held various key positions both inside and outside the university, including Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Academic Affairs, Director of International Cooperation, Director of the Institute for Gifted Education in Science, and Co-chairman of the Vision 2031 Committee.

He has also been active internationally. He served as a visiting professor at the Stanford Research Institute in the United States and Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, president of the Fuzzy Intelligence Systems Society, president of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics, president of the Future Society, chairman of the Science and Technology Policy Research Committee at the National Assembly Secretariat, chair of the Korean chapter of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society under the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and as a responsible professor for the National Assembly's Advanced Course on National Future Strategy. He is a full member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and the Korean Academy of Engineering.

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