New Institute for Basic Science (IBS) President Jang Seok-bok unveiled a plan for a "pioneer-type research group," under which young researchers in their late 30s to early 40s would be selected as group leaders and supported over the long term. He also said IBS will shift its performance evaluation and operations from an excellence model focused on papers in prestigious journals to a breakthrough model that opens new research domains.
At a press briefing in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 1st, Jang said, "We will recruit the youngest possible pioneer-type group leaders to inject vitality into IBS researchers and enable new breakthrough research to begin," adding, "We will gradually move up the point at which one becomes a group leader by about 10 years compared with now."
Jang was appointed the fourth IBS president on June 4. Since the launch of IBS research groups in 2012, Jang has led the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations as an internal researcher. This is the first time since IBS was launched in 2011 that a research group leader has become president, and the term is five years, through June 2031.
The model Jang highlighted is Germany's Max Planck Society. He said, "At Max Planck, researchers who later won the Nobel Prize were typically appointed as group leaders at ages 41 to 44, and they began their core research at 37 to 38," adding, "IBS will identify suitable researchers through peer review and allow them to conduct research freely for more than 10 years."
Earlier, in his inaugural speech last month, Jang laid out a vision to make IBS a "discovery hub." At the time, he said, "We must move beyond excellence and put new discoveries and new concepts at the core," and added, "Over the next five years, we will form more than 10 pioneer-type research groups."
The plan is also a declaration to change IBS's evaluation criteria. At the briefing, Jang said, "In Korea, to get promoted or move to the next stage, you have to compete on productivity centered on the number of papers or journals," adding, "Rather than judging research outcomes only by the number of papers or journal metrics, we will look more deeply at the content and impact of the research through peer review."
Jang also said he will make IBS's research ecosystem more open. He said, "While keeping basic science at the center, we will expand collaborative research with universities, government-funded research institutes, corporations, and hospitals," adding, "We will operate flexibly in line with each group's characteristics and goals."
However, Jang drew a line, saying, "This does not mean IBS will directly expand into applied research or industrialization; it means we will ease restrictions that existed when IBS researchers collaborated with external researchers." While maintaining the identity of basic science, he explained that IBS will lower barriers to research to fit an environment where technology and science are rapidly converging. Citing quantum science, Synthetic Biology, new materials, gene therapy, and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) as examples, he said the institute will flexibly broaden its research fields.
He went on, "Artificial intelligence (AI) is already outpacing many fields in basic science in terms of efficiency and focus. IBS will also take the lead in integrating basic science and AI," adding, "IBS plans to introduce about 1,000 graphics processing units (GPUs)."
Jang said, "I was an insider at IBS, but once I became president, I felt the institute had grown quite rigid," adding, "We will inject creativity and flexibility through organizational restructuring." He added, "We will also work to spread a culture of science so that the public consensus on the social value and importance of basic science widens and future generations can nurture dreams of becoming scientists."