As the founding chair, I am so thrilled to announce that KAIST has established the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences on April 2022. Our department is aimed to study the brain to understand the mind and to provide with engineering and clinical applications to contribute to a better world. We deeply explore the brain mechanisms at all levels from genes to neurons to circuits to behavior and examine links across these levels. The mission of our department is to cultivate the next generation of scientific leaders in brain and cognitive sciences and social leaders who will bring sustainable happiness to our society.

Department establishment on April 2022

Today, rapidly advancing technologies, particularly big data and artificial intelligence, are driving changes in the present society, so it is extremely hard to predict the future, and at this time, we should eventually return to the question about the human nature. Interactions with humans are very important for artificial intelligence and robots to play their roles in our society, and it is essential to be implemented in a way that increases human value and works as expected by humans. Although AI and robots currently operate significantly differently from the way the brain of Homo sapiens has evolved, we have no choice but to explore and reflect on the nature of human intelligence and mind in order to bring them into the world, where they will eventually have to live in symbiosis with humans.

How did we evolve into the most unique creatures on Earth? How do our brains form and work, and how do they perceive ourselves, others, and the world? What is the nature of human intellect, and how will it lead to human civilization in the future? How can we develop technologies that enhance human value? How can we overcome psychiatric and neurological diseases that make the human mind and body suffer and maintain a high level of health and quality of life? What institutions and cultures should we build based on "deep understanding of humans" so that our societies can have long-lasting and sustainable well-being and happiness? Humanity will require deep insight and reflection on these fundamental and essential questions.

To provide insightful answers to these questions and implement realistic solutions, KAIST established the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in April 2022. Our department goes beyond simply studying the brain's biological structure and functions to explore how the brain interacts with the body, humans with other humans, and the world with humans, and how they adapt in the process and realize engineering and medical applications based on these fundamental scientific foundations. We aim to cultivate academic leaders who will lead the intellectual history of humanity with outstanding achievements and leadership in the field of brain cognitive science, the most important discipline in the 21st century, and social leaders who will lead social innovation to create a healthier and happier society based on a broader understanding of the human mind.

Diverse Research areas

Neurobiology and systems neuroscience are at the heart of the education and research areas of our department. In particular, we aim to explore the broad impacts of brain-related genes and neuronal functions on whole human cognitive processes including macroscopic neural circuits and behaviors. In particular, we pursue to teach and explore ‘theoretical and computational neuroscience’ based on mathematics, physics, and computer modeling to gain a fundamental yet integrated understanding of the structure and function of the brain.

What makes our department's teaching and research unique and outstanding is to emphasize the field of cognitive science while being based on science and engineering. We seek to teach and explore in depth the full range of cognitive science disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, ethics, religious studies, and aesthetics. We deeply respect the long history and achievements of these disciplines in exploring the human intellect and mind, and now we attempt to bring an integrative approach to them. We believe that the transdisciplinary approach of neuroscience and cognitive science would be highly synergistic and that we can reach a more essential place only by carrying out engineering and medical applications based on this integrative approach. To this end, we will implement empirical, evidence-based cognitive explorations of the brain and cognition. Through a scientific and interdisciplinary approach, we will explore cognitive science with a focus on cognitive psychology, neurolinguistics, biological anthropology, neurophilosophy, cognitive studies on religion and ethics, and neuroaesthetics.

We intends to expand our research area to 'brain engineering and translational medicine on brain disorders' based on a solid foundation of neuroscience and cognitive science. We believe that as our understanding of the brain deepens, brain engineering will solve engineering problems in a concrete way for our society. Particularly, our department will cultivate academic and social leaders who explore the core technologies of brain engineering, such as brain-machine interface, brain-inspired artificial intelligence and robots, neuromorphic chips, and artificial brains. In the field of neurology, we will explore the fundamental technologies needed to deeply understand, diagnose, treat, and prevent psychiatric and neurological diseases based on solid neuroscientific principles and state-of-the-art engineering technologies. We aim to conduct research that greatly contributes to psychiatry, neurology, neurorehabilitation, and digital mental healthcare.

Providing the best educational curriculums

Our department places a special emphasis on top-notch education. With both undergraduate and graduate schools, we offers more than 100 classes in the best level of education to provide students with the opportunity to learn about the brain and explore brain and cognitive sciences by grade, teaching everything we need to know about the human brain. We provide hands-on experience dissecting and analyzing animal and human brains, use state-of-the-art cognitive research equipment, and allow you to learn to analyze data obtained from experiments using mathematics, physics, statistics, machine learning, and more.

Our department aims to grow rapidly into a department that studies having 50 excellent faculties in all fields of brain and cognitive sciences by 2030. Our department, which will become the largest in Asia, hope to contribute to the establishment of more brain science departments in other universities in Korea, and to build a foundation for collaborating with them in systematic education and research through the growth of our department. We aim to be a pillar that supports the development of the field of brain and cognitive sciences in Korea and the world.

Industry-academia collaboration through Brain Tech Institute

We are establishing the Brain Tech Institute to foster talent in the field of brain and cognitive sciences and to develop leaders across academia and industry. Research in brain and cognitive sciences is not limited to academic understanding, but it pursues to contribute to building new industrial areas, to helping corporate activities, and creating numerous startups. We fully understand that in order for brain science to grow significantly, an industry based on it must be established, and we want to lay the foundation for this within our department. The Brain Tech Institute plays a pivotal role in implementing education, research, and social activities that cannot be done within the schools by housing brain research centers, such as the Daekyo-KAIST cognitive enhancement research center, Neuroscience-based artificial intelligence research center, Origin-of-Humans research center, and Mindfulness and Contemplative science Research Center etc.

World-class research and education collaboration at KAIST New York campus

As you may have heard in the media, KAIST recently opened its New York Campus in New York City, where it is collaborating with New York University to offer dual degree programs and establish research centers to conduct joint research. Our Department will have its own space at KAIST's New York Campus, where undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and professors will reside and conduct excellent research with top universities in New York State, including New York University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and so forth. Undergraduates will be able to take NYU classes at KAIST's New York Campus for credit and earn minors, and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers will work together with NYU professors. As the first overseas campus in Korea, we will use the New York campus as a base camp to train academically recognized global talent and foster startups looking to enter the US market and other continents. The Brain Tech Institute will be located at both the Daejeon and New York campuses, creating synergies with the our department.

The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at KAIST, which explores everything about the human mind, has embedded the word "reflection" in its founding mission. Within the university's original role of educating and exploring, we have also embraced the role of "reflecting" on the knowledge gained through our research beyond engineering and medical applications as our most important mission. Rather than indiscriminately mass-producing knowledge and developing technologies as required by capital and power as led by a capitalist society, we seek to explore human intellect to enhance human values and contribute to the happiness of humanity as a whole. We want to do our best to cultivate reflective scientists and thoughtful engineers who will contribute to building a better society and creating a sustainable future society.

I welcome everyone who knocked on the door of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and I hope to communicate with you in various ways and have a warm relationship with you. Our department will always be open. No, I'll go first and say hello. We want to cooperate with you in creating a better society together.

Thank you all the time.

Sincerely yours,

Founding Chair, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, KAIST
On April 16, 2023, the first anniversary of the department's establishment