The Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea announced on the 26th that they have preliminarily selected four educational research groups for the 'Phase 4 Brain Korea 21 (BK21) Innovative Talent Development Project' in the space sector. BK21 is a representative program for training master's and doctoral level personnel that supports research scholarships, labor costs, etc., allowing graduate students and early-career researchers to focus on education and research.
The preliminarily selected educational research groups are: ▲ Space Exploration Drone Project Group (Konkuk University) ▲ Space-ICT Convergence New Space Global Talent Education Research Group (Sejong University) ▲ Sustainable Ultra-Low Orbit Space Service Talent Development Project Group (Korea Aerospace University) ▲ S2X Artificial Intelligence-Based Manned and Unmanned Complex System Education Research Group (Gyeongsang National University).
The Ministry of Education plans to receive and review appeals from universities that were eliminated this time, and after inspecting the preliminarily selected universities, will finalize the additional selection results next month.
If four educational research groups are ultimately selected, the 'Phase 4 BK21 Innovative Talent Development Project' in the space sector will increase from the current one (Low Orbits Space Economy Technology Leading Talent Development Project Group at Inha University) to a total of five. They will receive about 5.4 billion won annually until 2027.