The Dept. of MSE is ranked 16th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject in 2021. This is the eighth consecutive year that our department ranked in the top `20s in the QS rankings (2014: 16, 2015: 19, 2016: 18, 2017: 13, 2018: 13, 2019: 17, 2020: 19).

The Dept. of MSE was selected as the outstanding department in recognition of rise in the QS World University Rankings by Subject in 2021, along with The School of Electrical Engineering, the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Dept. of Chemistry. The Head of department, Sang-Hee Park, was presented the plaque from KAIST's President Kwang Hyung Lee at the award ceremony held on April 1.

Prof. Kyung Wook Paik retired on February 28, 2021 from KAIST, who has been striving for the development and education of science and technology for a long time, and was elected as an emeritus professor on March 1. Accordingly, he held his retirement ceremony, where he held a lecture commemorating his retirement, and received a plaque of appreciation. In this lecture, which was held both online and offline, graduated students who are currently hold prominent occupations participated offline and expressed their gratitude towards Prof. Paik.

Prof. Him Chan Cho joined the faculty as professor. He joined on March. 1, 2021. He obtained his bachelor's and Ph.D. degree from POSTECH. He majored in Halide perovskite materials, colloidal quantum dots, organic/inorganic hybrid light-emitting diodes, and solution-processed optoelectronics. His lab will be introduced extensively on the "Special Feature" section of the newsletter.

In February 2021, KAIST’s innovative academic achievements and R&D efforts for addressing the world’s greatest challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic were featured in ACS Nano as part of its special virtual issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of KAIST, curated by Professor Il-Doo Kim who is serving as an associate editor. The issue consisted of 14 review articles discussing 4 Topics: Emerging materials and their properties, Materials processing, Advanced analysis techniques, and Practical state-of-the-art device. Contributions have been made by KAIST faculty including Professor WooChul Jung, Seok woo Jeon, Jongmin Yuk, Seung Bum Hong, Steve Park in our department.

Prof. Byung-Ha Shin was chosen as the 2020 KAISTian of the Year. The KAISTian of the Year Award is presented prizes to the faculty members for outstanding performances in the academic, research, and for contributing to the development of KAIST. In 2020, while developing a technology to stabilize and increase efficiency of large band-gap organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite materials, known to be unstable in the past, it was laminated with silicon solar cells to develop a tandem solar cell with a high efficiency of 26.7%. It was evaluated that the institution's status has been greatly enhanced through this outstanding academic and research achievements. Prof. Shin’s work has been published in the journal of Science.

Prof. Il-Doo Kim of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who won the International Cooperation Award, successfully held the Emerging Materials Symposium in 2016, 2018, and 2020, as the organizing committee chair. He was recognized for his contribution to the internationalization of KAIST

Prof. Ki Bum Kang received the 2021 Song-am Distinguished Research Awards. This award was established by the will of President Lee of Korea Former Co. given to assistant professors in engineering schools with less than 5 years of appointment with an excellent research performance, in order to encourage their research activity.

Prof. Do Kyung Kim and Byeong-Soo Bae, who have raised the status of KAIST with outstanding research achievements and have contributed to industry-academia cooperation through technological innovation, won the “Outstanding prize” in 2020 Technology Innovation Awards of the College of Engineering.

Prof. Seungbum Hong won the grand prize for the Soo Young Lee Teaching Innovation Award at a commemorative forum on 2020 KAIST Education Innovation Day.

K-Materials YouTube channel : https://youtu.be/7U_K5NN00hw

Prof. WooChul Jung won the young ceramist award at the 2020 Fall Meeting of the Korean Ceramic Society Meeting held from November 23 in DCC. The young ceramist award, which was first established in 2014, is given to the researcher under age 45 who has shown outstanding achievements in the fields of ceramics.

Prof. Sang-Hee Park was selected in the 'Women's Science and Technology Impression of the Year-Academic Category' at the “2020 Women's Scientists and Technicians Annual Conference”, a venue for solidarity exchanges held online at 23rd of November. Professor Sang-Hee Park has been developing materials and devices in the display field for 23 years, and in particular, is conducting research on applying oxide semiconductor-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) to display driving devices and other devices such as image sensors, biosensors, and semiconductor devices. She is expected to become the first female president of the Information Display Society (KIDS) in 2022, as she will be elected senior vice president of the Information Display Society in 2020.

On November 19th, Prof. EunAe Cho of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at our university was awarded the Eugene Award selected by the Materials Research Society of Korea. Prof. EunAe Cho, along with excellent research achievements in the field of hydrogen fuel cells (H-index: 43, 7 technology transfers), is a representative of Korea in the fuel cell division of the International Energy Agency (IEA), and is the chairman of the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee. She has served as a member of various government policy advisory committees. She was selected as a winner of her Eugene Award for her contributions to her materials-related academic and technological advances, including government road-maps and project planning in the field of hydrogen fuel cells.

Prof. WooChul Jung of our department was selected as the winner of the Electronic and Information Materials Awards at the 2020 Fall Conference, hosted by the Korean Society of Metals and Materials. The Electronic and Information Materials Award is the highest honor in the field of electronic materials, awarded by the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials, and is awarded to researchers recognized as contributing to research and technology development for the advancement of electronic and information materials. Prof. WooChul Jung was awarded in recognition of his contributions to the academic development of the electronic materials field, such as developing catalysts and thin film materials required for fuel cells, water quality and gas sensors, by devoting himself to research in the catalyst field using oxide semiconductor.

Startup Team “Aldaver”, led by MSE Ph. D Student, Jin Oh Kim (advisor : Steve Park), presented on “Developing the next generation artificial cadaver technology using functional hydrogel” and won the grand prize from the Ministry of Science and ICT. Jin Oh Kim was selected as an excellent team for E*5 LabStartup program, and participated in 2020 X-IST Startups Competition. E*5 LabStartup is a customized support program that supports a research lab task-based start-up team by matching KAIST faculty and external experts 1:1.

The R&E Initiative for K-Materials Global Innovation was selected as "4th stage BrainKorea21 Project" and would be working on 7 years project from September 1, 2020.
Homepage: mse.kaist.ac.kr/bk21/

An Orientation and Opening Party for the New Undergraduate Students were held on March 19. Fifteen students in 2021 attended the online welcome party with the participation of Sang-Hee Park, the head of the department, and 13 professors. It was a place of communication through group mentoring and a useful time to promote friendship through fun games. Online welcome party for new students can be viewed again on the "K-Materials" YouTube channel below.

K-Materials YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piTzBgJLP0s

The following students were selected as winners of the 2020 Fall Semester Dean’s List Award, which is presented to undergraduates with outstanding academic performance and innovative ideas.

The following students were selected as winners of the 2020 Summer/Fall & Long-Term URP Program Workshop, which is presented to undergraduates with outstanding academic performance and innovative ideas. Kihyun Park and Soyun Joo were admitted the Master's program in our department after graduation, and Jinho Choi is attending the undergraduate program.

To efficiently promote graduate courses in our department, online promotional materials such as videos and web posters have been produced. These contents will be available on the K-Materials channel as well as on the KAIST Admissions website.

K-Materials YouTube channel

To efficiently promote graduate courses in our department, online promotional materials such as videos and web posters have been produced. These contents will be available on the K-Materials channel as well as on the KAIST Admissions website.

K-Materials Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFWY2md_MXY&t=5s
KAIST Admissions website: https://admission.kaist.ac.kr/graduate/video-promotion/?uid=509&mod=document#kboard-document

On March 1st, 2021, the second K-Materials student reporter was launched. Student reporters would support the department promotion like Newsletters, English pamphlets, Online Service including the K-Materials YouTube channel. In 2021, with the main purpose of promoting the department, the 2nd reporter group started active activities, such as producing the "New Materials Engineering Department Introduction Video" mentioned above as the first achievement and posting it on the K-Materials YouTube channel and the KAIST Admissions Office website.
- 2^nd reporter group

Inspection was conducted by the Safety Committee through the walk-through on March 15. The goal is to inspect each lab once a year, and four laboratories will be inspected on every Monday of second week of every month.

MSE Women’s Lounge has been set up at #4307(W1-1 Bd.) for the comfort of women in the department of MSE. All women in the department who has KAIST ID card could use within every its service hours.

"Happy Birthday Lunch" events were planned and conducted for counseling between professors and students in a comfortable atmosphere, but because of difficulties in offline meetings due to COVID-19, we sent birthday gifts to 52 undergraduate students who had their birthdays between September and January.

Bong-Ik Hwang, who devoted himself as a team Leader of the department, retired on December 31, 2020.

Han Yong Joo, a senior engineer in the Dept. was awarded the Contribution Award as result of the Outstanding Staff Awards to Mark the 50th Anniversary of Founding of KAIST in 2021.