Suh Nam-pyo

Template:Korean name Nam Pyo Suh (Korean: 서남표, Hanja: 徐南杓, 22 April 1936—) is the thirteenth and current president of KAIST. Suh began his appointment on July 13, 2006, replacing Robert B. Laughlin.

Biography

Suh was born in Korea on April 22, 1936, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1954 to join his father who was teaching at Harvard University. He completed his high school education at Browne & Nichols School before entering MIT as a freshman in 1955. He was naturalized in 1963 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He married Young Suh, and had four daughters. He is now the grandfather of six children.

Career

Suh is President of KAIST, South Korea's top institution. He has been named on June of 2006 and, on July 14, 2010 re-elected as President. His innovation on education and lots of fund-raising make him one of the famous figures in his home country.

From 1965-1969, Suh served as a professor at the University of South Carolina. In 1970 he began his professional career at MIT--serving as director of the MIT-Industry Polymer Processing Program from 1973-1984; director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity from 1977-1984; and Mechanical Engineering Department Head from 1991 to 2001.

During his tenure at MIT, Suh also worked for industry and the government. In October 1984, Professor Suh took a leave of absence from MIT to accept a Presidential Appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the National Science Foundation where he was in charge of engineering. During his tenure at NSF, he created a new direction for the Engineering Directorate and introduced a new organizational program designed "to ensure that the United States will occupy a leadership position in engineering well into the 21st century." He still keeping the title of Ralph E. Cross Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, while working as President of KAIST.

Suh is on the board of several companies and founded TREXEL, Inc. He also served as the Assistant Director for Engineering at US National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1988 and has consulted for the UN, National Laboratories, World Bank and the Korean government (where developed Korea's Five-Year Economic Plan in the 1980s).

Education

• B.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1959, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• M.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1961, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Ph.D, Mechanical Engineering, 1964, Carnegie Mellon University.

Controversy

As the president of KAIST, he implemented several new drastic policies which were controversial.

1. All the classes of KAIST are to be given in English. It was applied not only required subject for one's major, but even for liberal arts, such as Korean history or Korea philosophy.

2. Students who get lower GPA than 3.0/4.3 should pay "punitive" tuition. (Before that, KAIST tuition was technically free). If one's GPA is below 3.0, one should pay 60 thousand won (about 60 USD) per 0.01 below 3.0. So if one gets GPA 2.9, then he should pay 600 thousand.

From January, 2011 to April, 4 students of KAIST had committed suicides. The first suicider, a frensh who was admitted for his talents for robotics killed himself worrying at "punitive" tuition. He attended a vocational high school, which is not for students who go to college, but for students who get a job immediate after graduation. Although he received the national prize in a robot contest, he could not follow the academically rigorous lectures, because he lacked in the academic background required for these lectures. So he showed bad performance in class, but without consideration of his background, he should pay a huge amount of tuition. This pressure caused him suicide.

After his suicide, 3 more students killed themselves who could not adapt themselves in school. This serial suicide aroused a public controversy on his education philosophy, which stands for competition. Many of scholars in Korea criticized his philosophy and policy as improper education.

Although he protected himself, saying " When I was a student of MIT, I studied huge amount as if I drank water from a fire hose", or "Even in the ivy league schools, there are many suiciders", this made people more angry.

As the public criticism on him grew and many of them called for his resignation, he gave up these contriversial policies. Even one of KAIST professor says " he is obsessed with his own dogmatic idea. He doesn't try to communicate with others."

Contributions

• Dr. Suh is the creator of the axiomatic design theory. The theory and methodology for design have been adopted by many industrial firms and taught at many universities and industrial firms throughout the world. The axiomatic design principles have been used to create new materials, products, processes, systems, software, and organizations. He taught a large number of industrial engineers, including automotive companies, aerospace companies, and defense industries. He has received many awards and honors for this work.

• He also advanced a complexity theory and the concept of Functional Periodicity for the creation of stable systems. He has given many plenary lectures at international conferences on complexity theory and axiomatic design theory.

• He has made major contributions in the field of tribology by advancing theories and practical solutions: the delamination theory of wear, solution wear, genesis of friction, undulated surfaces, electrical connectors, and others. He won many awards and honors for this work.

• Innovative electrical connector design, commercialized by Tribotek, Inc., was recognized as the product of the year by Power Electronics Technology magazine, in 2005.

• In 1973, Professor Suh established the first university/industry cooperative research program at MIT known as the MIT-Industry Polymer Processing Program, which became a model in establishing similar programs at many other universities by NSF and in formulating the Stevenson-Wydler Innovation Act of 1981 by U. S. Congress. He has also created many polymer-processing techniques, in addition to generating many of the leading academics in the field of polymer processing. He has received many patents in polymer processing and related fields.

• Among the many new materials, products and manufacturing processes invented by him are: Microcellular plastics (known as MuCell and used commercially worldwide), Mixalloy, USM high pressure foam molding technology (used world wide), electrostatic charge-decay NDE technique, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, Low R electrical connectors, low friction surfaces, and foam/straight plastic lamination process (a major industrial product). Many of these have been commercialized.

• The MIT Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity (of which Professor Suh was the founder and first Director until his NSF appointment) became one of the world's largest and most successful laboratories of its kind.

• His inventions have become the basis for several successful commercial and industrial technologies. He founded several companies based on these technologies. Microcellular plastics are widely used worldwide (tradename: MuCell, Trexel, Inc.). Woven electrical connectors are an award winning disruptive technology, marketed by Tribotek, Inc. Software that are used in design, Acclaro, is a product of Axiomatic Design Solutions, Inc. Mixalloy was successfully developed and commercialized by Sutek, Inc.

• Professor Suh has supervised approximately 50 PhDs and 70 SMs in the fields of materials processing, mechanical engineering, tribology, design, and manufacturing. His former students now number among the most promising educators and industrial engineers in the world.

• He was the principal architect of the highly successful Five-Year Economic Plan of Korea for the Period 1980 --1985.

• Upon his appointment to the National Science Foundation by President Reagan, Dr. Suh instituted new structure and policies for engineering education and research to prepare for a new era. His plans received strong endorsements from U.S. Congress and the Administration. Many distinguished researchers and educators joined him at NSF to implement the new programs for engineering education and research. Dr. Suh created programs for design theory and methodology, biotechnology, computer-integrated engineering, emerging technologies, critical technologies, the Engineering Research Centers, Expedited Grants for Novel Research, Creativity Grants, and the University-Industry-Government Cooperative Program for engineering education. For his contributions, he received the Distinguished Service Award of the National Science Foundation.

• As the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, Professor Suh worked with his colleagues to elevate the already highest ranked department to a higher level of excellence by establishing clear macro-strategic goals and carefully developing and implementing programs and activities to achieve these goals. He established the following goals, which were achieved during his tenure as Department Head:

1. Transformation of the mechanical engineering field from a discipline primarily based on physics to a discipline based on physics, information and biology.

2. Concentration of the two ends (rather than the middle) of the research spectrum – basic research and technology innovation – where the impact on knowledge base and society is the largest.

3. Improvement of undergraduate education by providing a right context for learning, integrating engineering science subjects, providing hands-on experience in design and manufacturing, and simultaneously teaching design and analysis in all subjects.

4. Emphasis on interdisciplinary research at the interface between traditional mechanical engineering and information, biology, and energy, which have resulted in the creation of the d’Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems, the Laboratory for BioInstrumentation, Hatosopoulos Microfluids Laboratory, Auto ID center, and the Laboratory for 21st Century Energy. Thanks to his efforts, the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering has some of the finest teaching and research laboratories in the world.

The educational goal of the Department is to prepare MIT students for leadership in their chosen fields. To achieve this goal, an innovative undergraduate curriculum was adopted. This curriculum incorporates many new ideas and pedagogical innovations. The BJ and Chunghi Park Lecture Halls were created to enable a “self-discovery” form of learning, as well as more traditional forms of lecturing. He also raised a substantial sum of money from MIT alumni/ae and industrial corporations to renovate and endow undergraduate teaching laboratories and to establish endowed senior and junior faculty chairs. Also to encourage and support faculty efforts in teaching-materials development, an endowment fund for book-writing was created. Oxford University Press through its MIT/Pappalardo Series of Mechanical Engineering Books will publish the books written with the support of this endowment fund.

Professor Suh also established the Manufacturing Institute at MIT to provide an educational mechanism for teaching engineering systems and to strengthen the interaction between MIT and industry, by conducting industrially funded research in the field of large systems and by creating more effective technology transfer mechanisms.

His major achievement as Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department was the hiring of the brightest young professors from many fields – mechanical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, physics, and optics -- who had already become leaders in their respective fields. Nearly 40% of the department faculty of 60 were hired during his tenure.

Honorary doctorates

Eng. D. (Hon.), Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA.
L.H.D. (Hon.), University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Lowell, MA.
Tekn.Dr. hc, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
D. Eng honoris causa, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Doctor Scientiarum Honoris Causa, the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Doctor of Science and Technology (Hon), Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Doctor Honoris Causa, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

See also

• EEWS
• OLEV, On-Line Electric Vehicle
• Mobile Harbor

External links

• Biography