‘Basic science research key to nation’s advancement’

New research institute hopes to bring big changes for nation’s science community


The Institute for Basic Science will change the way Korea carries out research and development to allow creative and original research, according the organization’s first chief Oh Se-jung.

The institute launched in November seeks to hire top-class scientists from across the world.

“Our target is not just for Korea, but a research institution that can compete on the international stage,” Oh said.

Oh said that while Korea had reaped good results by chasing advanced countries, following the leaders is no longer enough.

“Making just another institute is not the most important thing. Our biggest aim is to establish an environment where original and creative research is possible.” 

As part of the plans, the IBS will set up 50 research groups by 2017, and is currently in the process of recruiting scientists to head each group. At present, the institute has selected 10 group leaders ― nine of whom have started work ― and is now reviewing the second batch of hopefuls.

“Basic sciences are like infrastructure for science and technology. Basic sciences lead to the development of a pool of good human resources, and good human resources mean those who think up new things. We need to nurture this ability.”

But basic research has until now been neglected by the government, which Oh says is the only entity capable of investing in the field due to the large budget and risks, and because it is difficult to connect research results to commercial applications.

In order to bridge this gap, the IBS has established an intellectual property management team that includes patent lawyers.

“High-quality basic research is very likely to have applications, and because we will conduct world-class original research, there is a high probability that such results will be forthcoming.”


Rare isotope accelerator

One of the institute’s biggest projects is building a rare isotope accelerator by 2017. The IBS is collaborating on the project with the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, where the Korea-U.S. Cooperation Center for Accelerator Science recently went into operation.

According to Oh, the accelerator will be an important tool in enabling Korea to conduct crucial basic science research.

“Like CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), it will enable research into things like the origin of the universe and issues concerning the nucleus (of elements) because there is only so much that can be done on the theoretical level,” he said. CERN is the multinational body that operates the Large Hadron Collider, which was used in July to discover what is thought to be the Higgs boson.

Oh says that the accelerator will also enable the country to play a role in science that befits its economic scale.

“By doing this, we will be contributing to the world’s knowledge as we have now come to a point where we need to play such a role,” Oh said.

“The accelerator will not be for Korea alone. The facility will be open to scientists from across the world, and that is also the only way for it to be fully utilized.”

The benefits of building the accelerator will not, however, be limited to academic contributions, Oh says.

“When you build completely new equipment, the technologies involved have to be at the cutting edge and such technologies can give rise to new companies,” he said, adding that the CERN has given rise to small and medium-sized companies with world-class technological capabilities.

“In the very long run, it could be possible to shorten the half-life of nuclear waste as the nuclei of elements are changed (in rare isotope accelerator experiments).”

The half-life is the period of time required for a radioactive isotope to lose half of its radioactivity. Some isotopes found in nuclear waste can retain radioactivity for tens of thousands of years. 


Research policies and environment

While the direction of Korea’s science-related policies has in general been beneficial, Oh, who has served on scientific advisory committees for a number of presidents, says that Korea needs to give its scientists more autonomy.

He says that despite the country directing an increasingly large amount of resources into research and development, the government’s management- and result-oriented approach has been an obstacle for Korea’s scientific community.

According to Oh, Korea ranks among the top five in terms of the ratio of investment to gross domestic product, and the country’s budget for research and development investment has increased at the second-fastest rate in the past 10 years after China.

He said that as investment increased, the government used tangible results ― such as papers and patents ― to assess research projects. Oh also pointed out that scientists have become compliant to this environment and adapted to the system by writing papers on relatively small findings instead of waiting for bigger results.

“Research has a high probability of failure, but government-funded projects in Korea have a success rate of over 90 percent. This is an embarrassment: It means that only things that are likely to succeed were tried,” Oh said. He added that one of the fundamental aims of the IBS is to change this way of thinking.

As part of the efforts, assessments at the IBS will be conducted once every three years, and researchers will be given the freedom to choose their subjects.

“There is something a Nobel laureate said to me. He said, ‘When more than half of the experts think an idea is possible, that idea is not worth pursuing.’ But we only did things that looked likely; this way of working cannot lead to a Nobel prize.”

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)