More Than a Year Without a President... KAIST Fails to Appoint New Chief as No Candidate Wins Majority

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which has been without a president for more than a year, has once again failed to appoint a new president.

The KAIST board of directors held a meeting on the 26th at the Kim Jae Chul Graduate School of AI in Seocho-gu, Seoul, and put forward an agenda item to appoint a new president. However, the motion was voted down because none of the three candidates won a majority of the votes.

Main Gate of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Daejeon Main Campus.

Since March last year, the board has been deliberating among three short-listed candidates: incumbent President Lee Kwanghyung, Professor Kim Joungho of the School of Electrical Engineering, and former Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) President Lee Yonghoon. However, it failed to reach a final decision.

As a result of this rejection, KAIST will have to restart the process from scratch and reopen applications for candidates. Given that the appointment process normally takes at least three months, the prolonged vacancy in the presidency appears unavoidable.

The term of the incumbent president, Lee Kwanghyung, already expired on February 22 last year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.