Around the Agreement after signing (from Left, Dr. Bon-Cheol Ku, Dr. Jun Kyung Kim, Dr. Kunihiro Hamada, Dr. Yoshio Hashimoto, Special Contract Professor Morinobu Endo, and Director of International Office in the Faculty of Engineering Nobuhiko Henmi)

On 27th February Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University concluded an Academic Cooperation and Exchange Agreement with Institute of Advanced Composite Materials, KIST Jeonbuk, Korea. This is the 4th such Academic Cooperation and Exchange Agreement concluded by the research cluster with a foreign university/institute.

The signing ceremony held at the Shinshu University Faculty of Engineering was attended by 25 persons from the 2 universities. Signing the agreement for Shinshu University were Kunihiro Hamada, Dean of the Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research and also Dean of the Faculty of Textile Science and Technology, and Yoshio Hashimoto, Director of the Institute of Carbon Science and Technology, which is one of the 5 research institutes of the research cluster; and for KIST were Jun Kyung Kim, Director General of KIST Jeonbuk, and Bon-Cheol Ku, Head of the Carbon Composite Materials Research Center, KIST Jeonbuk. It is intended that mutual visits by researchers, seminars, joint research, etc., will be carried out to deepen exchange and to raise the level of research of both sides.

KIST was founded in 1966 as Korea’s first institute of science and technology. They are the leading science and technology institute in Korea, and have contributed greatly to the rapid development of the Korean economy. Within Institute of Advanced Composite Materials, KIST Jeonbuk is a world-class level research center in the field of research in carbon-based composite materials. Joint research were carried out from 2013 to 2014 between Jun Kyung Kim, at that time Director General of the Institute, and Morinobu Endo, at that time Shinshu University Special Contract Professor. The exchange between the two institutes had continued since then, deepening the relationship of trust between them, which lead to the Exchange Agreement between the 2 research institutes.