KAIST and Technion Presidents share their views

Very interesting stories of two well-known cases of highly reputable, but relatively young universities: KAIST (South Korea) and Technion (Israel). The Presidents of both institutions presented their visions within the Island initiative at Skoltech. Their key thoughts:

Prof. Sung-Chul Shin,​ KAIST President:
- 20% of faculty members in Korea are from KAIST
- Every fourth PhD in Korea has the affiliation with KAIST
- KAIST graduates founded 1500 startups
- KAIST Vision 2031: global value-creative leading university
- AI principle and design application at undergraduate level is a must
- Institute of startup KAIST: launched 90 startups
- Universities are crucial for national development
- The major collaboration occurs at the level of Professors

Prof. Peretz Lavie, Technion President:
- Necessity is the mother of innovation
- The failure should be within the education. The ability to sustain after the failure is very important
- Everyone in Israel must serve in Army. As a consequence, the students come to the university in an older age than in other countries
- Concerning the Chief science officer. The ideas are evaluated based on one criteria: merit. CSO gives money to startups and the startups must return this money only in case of success
- For the last 10 years 95 companies affiliated with Technion were launched. One of the most developed ones, mentioned by Prof. Lavie has an evaluation of $7 billion. Another company was recently sold for $1,5 billion
- Students spend more time in R&D centers, than in a classroom
- Technion graduates founded 1600 companies (since 1994), 50% of which are still alive
- Over the last 10 years Technion got an income of $200 mln from patents
- Technion spends around $2 mln per year to keep the patents
- “In 1990s we counted papers as KPIs, but we changed this policy - the quality is much more important, as well as the influence on people’s lives”