— Annual Funding of 4.5 Billion Won, 22.5 Billion over Five Years for Yonsei Research Projects

The Yonsei University Future-Leading Research Initiative (YUFRI), which is designed to support groundbreaking and creative research projects at Yonsei, has been launched. With annual funding of 4.5 billion won, and 22.5 billion won over five years, the initiative aims to strengthen Yonsei’s position as a globalized, research-based university, while expanding the university’s role in fostering Korea’s creative economy and addressing important social issues. Intended to promote world class research and stimulate competition in all disciplines and fields, the initiative explicitly allocates funding of up to 1 billion won per year to projects in the humanities and basic sciences.

—Research Initiative Composed of 7 Different Programs

The YUFRI is composed of six projects from three general areas—basic sciences, convergence, and international collaborative research—as well as an open topic research program. All full-time faculty members working on one of Yonsei’s campuses, including research associates, are eligible to apply for funding from the initiative.

The Yonsei Research Leaders Program strives to encourage research excellence by identifying scholars performing creative research and enabling them to become exceptional, world class research leaders. The Yonsei Challenging Research Program specifically targets young scholars, providing support for cutting-edge research and ideas that will create new fields of research.

While the two programs mentioned above are dedicated to promoting research excellence, the Problem-Solving Convergence Research Program and the University-Industry Collaborative Research Program aim to address pressing social issues by providing practical solutions. The first of these is designed to be interdisciplinary, with researchers from various fields working to meld rationality, insight, and creativity in order to solve real-world social problems. On the other hand, the University-Industry Program seeks to facilitate partnerships between Yonsei researchers and industry, ones that will spur new and important technological developments. In particular, this program is intended to foster greater technology transfer and commercialization of technology.

The International Collaborative Research Program seeks to build international research networks with outstanding scholars from outside the country, especially in emerging research fields, while the Global Specialization Project, organized by the Graduate School, is intended to specialize the university’s research capacity. Lastly, the Open Topic Research Programs enables Yonsei faculty to propose free-themed research that has powerful social implications.

—Blind Review Selection Process Emphasizing Creativity

As the initiative prioritizes creativity and the support of research in emerging fields, applications will be evaluated according to their potential to effect a paradigm shift in major research areas. The selection process has been streamlined, with research proposals limited to ten pages or less. In the first stage, the review committee evaluates each proposal, providing a written evaluation in the form of a blind review. Applicants who make it past the document review are asked to make a presentation on their project, which is then evaluated by the specific grant program committee, along with outside experts. In the final stage, the Promotion Committee puts together the results from the first and second stages to determine the final recipients.