The Ministry of Science and ICT said on the 22nd that seven Korean researchers were selected this year for the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), known as the "Nobel Prize fund" in the life sciences field.
In the grant category, Kim Jin-hyun, principal researcher at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seo Tae-won, a professor at Hanyang University, and Lee Gil-ju, a professor at Busan National University, were selected.
They belong to 34 research teams and will receive about $300,000 to $400,000 in research funding annually for three years to conduct international joint research.
Kim will work with researchers from RIKEN in Japan and Stanford University in the United States to develop next-generation neural circuit control technology that selectively suppresses active synapses.
Seo will conduct research with researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel to use robotics technology to reveal the hidden underground ecosystem of mole-rats.
Lee will work with researchers from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom to uncover the optical principles of the distinctive eye structure of trilobites from 500 million years ago and apply them to next-generation bioinspired image sensors.
In the accelerator category, which offers an opportunity to additionally join teams previously selected by HFSP, Kim Jae-kyung, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Yoon Hye-jin, a professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), were selected.
Kim will conduct mathematical modeling research with researchers from South Africa and Turkey to analyze tick and virus transmission ecology under climate change, while Yoon plans to work with researchers from the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada to elucidate metabolomics-based biochemical pathways of fear signal generation.
In the fellowship category, which provides $60,000 annually for three years, 55 people were selected, including from Korea Dr. Tae Hyun-hyeok and Dr. Han Dae-hee.
Dr. Tae is researching the molecular mechanism of vesicle heterogeneity that determines the plasticity of secretion at Yale University in the United States, and Dr. Han is studying synaptic signal transmission mechanisms during motor learning at the University of California, San Diego in the United States.
Meanwhile, the HFSP funding program received a total of 1,180 research proposals this year, the most applications in its history.