EVERY YEAR, researchers from 200 nations across the globe produce more than 418,000 collaborative articles under joint research programs. It represents more than 20% of the world's total scientific output. However, South Korea suffers from one of the lowest numbers of international research collaborations in the developed world. Research produced in the nation continues to lack impact, ranking third-last in the number of SCI papers per researcher and fifth-last in the average number of citations among the OECD countries.

   In its efforts to tackle the limitations of domestic research, Yonsei University has taken a leading role among South Korean universities to internationalize its research. Its College of Engineering, the largest research body in the university, has led this charge, making use of vast amounts of university funding, implementing structural changes, and successfully fostering international collaborative research.

Collaborative Research, Korea's Achilles' heel

   We live in an age of collaborative research. A fundamental shift has taken place in the academic world, with more and more researchers collaborating across borders inside expansive global research networks. The number of international research collaborations has tripled over the past 15 years, with 21.3% of the world's total scientific output featuring international co-authors in 2015. In 2017, more than 60% of articles in the Nature Index were internationally collaborative.

   This rapid growth is based on the substantive benefits of collaborative research. More people involved in projects result in more funding from governments, expertise from various fields, and longevity of research across generations of researchers. For instance, the €7.5 billion annual operation cost of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider, is spread across the 23 nations in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and invites over 12,400 researchers from 70 countries. Research has proven that collaborative papers are of higher quality, receive more citations, and generate more impact.

   It is then surprising that South Korea, the second-largest spender on R&D as percentage of GDP, is one of the least internationalized in the world. The nation spent more on R&D than any other nation in the OECD and was home to the third-largest pool of researchers in 2018. However, it ranked 16th in international collaboration and 21st in technical exchange. South Korea accounted for just 10% of international research when compared to the top countries in the OECD. None of the top 100 SCI papers, the most influential in the world, was produced by Korean researchers.

   While the lack of collaborative research was a problem of developing Asian nations, Japan and China introduced national programs to address this problem. Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), the largest particle physics laboratory in Japan, was established in 1997 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics through investments into infrastructure that supported collaborative research. China meanwhile introduced a $7.2 billion plan to create 100 world-class universities and invested heavily into internationalizing its education system. Meanwhile, South Korea's attempt to invest in research through the Brain Korea fund in 1998 lacked efforts towards internationalization. Despite the yearly increase in total funding for scientific research, only \321 billion was invested into international research in 2018, a mere 1.4% of the total budget.

   Apart from this lack of funding, many scholars have attributed the lack of collaborative research to the closed South Korean research environment. Researchers are provided large amounts of funding for internal research, and many do not have the incentive to venture into the international scene for collaborative research. This dilemma prevents further opportunities for international research; academic researchers should feel a stronger sense of responsibility to participate in international research in order to create maximal synergy in tandem with their foreign peers.

Yonsei Engineering’s Charge Forward

   Yonsei University has thankfully been a gamechanger when it comes to fostering international collaborative research. One of its efforts is Yonsei Frontier Lab, its joint research platform with leading international researchers created in 2017. By engendering partnerships with foreign universities and funding researchers to conduct joint programs at Yonsei, the program hopes to elevate the quality of research, out of which the College of Engineering accounts for more than 26%. The Lab's "Joint Research Program through Strategic Partnership" (JRPSP) works to establish a joint research network with world-leading universities. From the University of Geneva to Emory University, the program has formed over 42 joint research teams with foreign universities. Most recently, the YFL signed a joint research partnership with Tel Aviv to work on joint research and technology transfer.

   The program has also worked to develop personal relationships with foreign researchers and professors at Yonsei University. "High-quality information passes through face-to-face conversations," told Kim Seong-lyun, the Chair of the School of Electrical and Electric Engineering to The Yonsei Annals. "It is through these personal meetings that partnerships are created," he said. The Yonsei Frontier Program for Outstanding Scholars (YFPOS) provides up to $30,000, one of the largest university internalization funds, to invite researchers from around the world to conduct joint research. Through this program, professors can freely invite their foreign partners and the university provides for housing, research space, and stay support for guest faculty members. Twenty-seven teams have been selected for this research, and they were able to publish 42 co-authored papers.

   In an interview with the Annals, Senior Vice President for Research Affairs and Head of the Yonsei Frontier Lab, Professor Kim Woo-teak, stated that the YFPOS program not only produced prominent research papers but also put Yonsei University on the map as well. Throughout this series of collaborations, Yonsei Engineering served as a great host for renowned scholars like Professor Seung-Pyo Hong and was able to create a strong bond with fellow researchers that naturally resulted in impressive research outputs —32.4% of all papers at Yonsei University are now published through international joint research.

   Recently, the school produced its first tenured foreign professor at the Department of Material Science in the College of Engineering, Professor Aloysius Soon. A global researcher who has studied in Germany and Australia, the professor accounts for the warm support of the department during his first few years at Yonsei University. They assigned a Korean mentor for his first years at the university and helped him receive funding for research projects. He was able to start his own lab, the Materials Theory Group (MTG) as a result.

   His research at Yonsei University has been remarkable. The "Hydrogen-doped viscoelastic liquid metal microparticles for stretchable printed metal lines" paper published in Nature recently focused on understanding the oxidation behavior of non-ferrous metals to create a metal alloy that acts as a liquid but retains the conductivity of a solid. A bendable, stretchable liquid metal capable of conducting electricity, the alloy can move fluidly across surfaces and still conduct electrons just like a solid wire. The research has enormous implications, from foldable smartphones and machines to creating different shapes of metals to increase contact with incoming gases.

   Yonsei professors are seeking ways to further enrich the research environment. They hope to overcome funding shortages through collaborations with the private sector to continue its quest towards internationalization. To this end, the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering's RAMO (Robotic And MObile networks laboratory) has led the charge in the nation's leadership in 5G technology. Led by Professor Kim Seong-lyun, the lab has been at the helm of PriMO-5G, a joint research project between South Korea and Europe. Working with private companies such as Ericson and Korea Telecom in partnership with KAIST, King's College London, and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the project has demonstrated an end-to-end 5G system that provides a cross-continental immersive video service for moving objects such as drones.

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   To take advantage of the current momentum, some professors have expressed that there remain several problems still to be solved. Professors from the College of Engineering have especially voiced their concerns regarding the funding structure of research for the college. A majority of research is currently funded by the central government through various grants to universities. However, these funding have very specific research targets and researchers do not have the room to explore new fields and collaborate with international researchers.

   Also, Yonsei University's funding structure dictates that the university centralizes all funds from colleges and distributes them equally between departments. This means that the colleges requiring more research funding, such as the College of Engineering, receive less than the money they raised in research output and have little to invest back into research. This is in stark contrast to other research-based universities such as KAIST and POSTECH, which have their own independent funding. A possible solution to this would be more autonomy in the funding of colleges, like the College of Medicine, which has complete autonomy from the university in running its hospital and departments.

   While many challenges lay ahead in Yonsei's journey to becoming an international research giant, it has made considerable progress through visionary leadership and continued efforts.