Pohang City Expands Advanced Bio and Manufacturing Infrastructure, Leaps Forward as a Leading City for New Industries

Membrane Protein Research Center Establishes Korea’s First "Cryo-ET" System

Selected as an Outstanding Case by the Ministry of Education

"RIST Advanced Manufacturing Incubation Center" Set to Launch in July

Full-Cycle Support for Start-Ups

Pohang City is accelerating the creation of a new industrial ecosystem for bio and advanced materials industries by initiating full-scale shared use of advanced bio-analytical equipment and preparing to open an advanced manufacturing incubation facility.

The city is focusing its efforts on strengthening regional competitiveness by driving two key initiatives—demonstrating R&D capabilities and establishing a manufacturing start-up hub.

The advanced analytical infrastructure jointly established by Pohang City and POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has been recognized as an exemplary national case.

Professor Lee Ji-o is explaining the Cryo-et equipment. Provided by Pohang City

The POSTECH Membrane Protein Research Center announced that it was selected as an outstanding case in the infrastructure enhancement category for the Ministry of Education’s ‘Basic Science Research Capability Enhancement Program’.

Through this project, the center introduced Korea’s first Cryo-Electron Tomography (Cryo-ET) equipment in September last year and has since completed a comprehensive analytical infrastructure, including large-scale computing resources (GPGPU) and storage systems.

Cryo-ET technology, which freeze-vitrifies biological samples to obtain three-dimensional high-resolution information, requires high-performance computing for data alignment and reconstruction.

The center has established a one-stop support system from equipment introduction to data processing and, starting this month, has officially launched a reservation service for researchers nationwide.

Lee Ji-O, Director of the Membrane Protein Research Center, stated, "We aim to support researchers across the country so they can conduct advanced analyses more quickly and reliably, thereby reducing the accessibility gap to advanced analytical equipment." Jeong Hyeonjeong, Head of the Bio-Future Industry Division at Pohang City, added, "By utilizing our large-scale equipment, we expect to create significant synergy in fields such as AI-based structure-driven drug discovery in the region."

Alongside the advancement of research infrastructure in the bio sector, the ‘RIST Advanced Manufacturing Incubation Center’—a manufacturing start-up hub for advanced materials and bio start-ups—is undergoing final checks before its official launch in July.

On May 20, Pohang City visited the center, which is located within the Research Institute of Industrial Science & Technology (RIST), to inspect the facility and its business support system.

This center, completed in March, is a public-private partnership project. It boasts a total floor area of 4,074 square meters (two above-ground floors) and features expandable large-scale manufacturing halls up to 52 meters in length, a clean room, and a central supply system for seven types of gases, providing advanced manufacturing infrastructure capable of everything from technology validation to initial mass production.

The center plans to support the entire growth cycle of companies, including engineering support for hardware start-ups struggling with facility investment and process stabilization during the initial mass production stage, business matching with POSCO Group affiliates, and finding global partners.

By linking with the region’s abundant industry-academia-research infrastructure—including POSTECH, RIST, and the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory—synergy effects are expected to be maximized.

Lee Sangyeob, Head of the Job and Economy Division of Pohang City, emphasized, "The RIST Advanced Manufacturing Incubation Center is a core infrastructure that helps technology-based manufacturing start-ups grow beyond R&D to the actual production stage. We will actively support outstanding technology companies in the region to gain global competitiveness."

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