Total investment of 35 billion won with 2.27 billion won of national funds for 5 years, Fostering graduate and doctoral students in Solar Cells
Granting a government-issued official certification
[Dec 13, 2010]
Yeungnam University will be a cradle for fostering experts to lead the solar cell sector.
Recently, Yeungnam University was selected for the '2010 Energy Personnel Fostering Project' supervised by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. Thus, Yeungnam University will invest a total of 3.5 billion won (including 2.27 billion won from national funding] until June 2015 to construct a curriculum for the 'Solar cell materials and process fusion Graduate School', and to foster graduate and doctoral students in solar cells.
The solar cell materials process fusion graduate school course (hereinafter called 'fusion graduate school course') of Yeungnam University, received the highest evaluation of the 16 selected graduate school fields through a competition of 6 to 1 and received additional funding for the first year project.
The fusion graduate school course made up of professors of the School of Chemical Engineering and Department of Physics, is an industry-academic education program made for the fostering graduate and doctoral students. By fostering leading human resources in the solar cell materials and process sector from the 2011 school year to the end of June, 2015, and supplying them to related domestic companies and research centers, its final goal is to help promote the domestic solar cell industry and to help procure global competitiveness.
For this, Yeungnam University is planning to select a total of 229 new students in its fusion graduate school for masters and PhD (29 in 2011, and 40 for each school year from 2012 to 2015). They will be offered 'corporate-customized Co-op masters and PhD courses', and they will be given an internship or on-site training opportunity for a minimum of one month through special employment contracts with related companies.
In particular, all students participating in the fusion graduate school will have to participate in industry-academic co-op projects proposed by participating companies, and write a thesis for their degree on the projects. Those who receive the degree will also be given an official certification by the government (Korea Institute of Energy Technology, Evaluation and Planning). In addition, it is planning to construct an organic industry-academic cooperation network by appointing prominent industrial figures as visiting professors, implementing research-year systems at industries by professors, recall education of graduates, and customized re-education of employee at participating companies.
Professor Park, Chin-ho (52, School of Display and Chemical Engineering), general supervisor of the project, stated, "With the rapid growth of the world's solar power generation market (photo below), the Korean government showed its intention to foster high-end human resources in the green energy sector. With Yeungnam University receiving the best assessment and being selected for this project, the foothold for going into the world's top 10 in the green energy sector was provided." He also added, "With the undergraduate Green Energy major and the solar cell materials and process fusion graduate school being interlinked, Yeungnam University will become the 'hub of green energy education' with global competitiveness."
On the other hand, the energy personnel fostering project is a Ministry of Knowledge Economy sponsored project in which a total of 7.1 billion won will be funded to 25 universities for 28 sub-projects on new renewable energy and atomic energy in order to foster human resources needed for the new growth engine of the energy industry.
