Theme: Impact on the Future

TEDxKFAS is a platform to share innovative new ideas that we hope will help make the future a better place for humanity – and the environment.

Featuring a diverse and passionate array of 13 speakers, the inaugural TEDxKFAS will be held all day on Aug. 7, 2015 at the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies’ (KFAS) headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul.

Our general theme for the conference is “Impact on the Future,” and each speaker will give short (under 18 minutes) talks on the following three topics: “Smart Living,” “China in 2025” and “Venture for a Better Future.”

As leading experts in their respective fields, these volunteer speakers are making the trip to Korea from all over the world to give us a glimpse of what the future holds.

Teheran-ro
Gangnam-gu
Seoul, Seoul Teugbyeolsi
South Korea

Daeyeol Lee

Dr. Daeyeol Lee is Professor of Neurobiology and Psychology at Yale University, and studies the brain mechanisms for learning and decision making. He studied economics at Seoul National University, and obtained his doctoral degree in neuroscience from the University of Illinois. He is also an editor for the Journal of Neuroscience. His research has been funded by the US National Institute of Health for more than 15 years, published in leading journals, including Nature, Neuron, and Science, and reported in numerous news media, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Discover, Forbes, National Geographic, and Time.

Feng Zhu

Dr. Zhu Feng is currently Executive Director of China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea, Nanjing University. He is also a senior research fellow at the China Center for Peace and Development, and a professor at Peking University's School of International Studies. He writes extensively on regional security in East Asia, the nuclear issue in North Korea, and China-US military and diplomatic relations. He sits on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals, consults independently for the Chinese government and the private sector, and comments frequently on TV, radio, and print media on Chinese foreign affairs and security policy. Professor Zhu began his undergraduate studies at the Department of International Politics at Peking University in 1981, and received his Ph.D. from Peking University in 1991.

Gerald Chan

Dr. Gerald Chan is Professor and Head of Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Professor Chan is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Before he joined the University of Auckland in 2009, he was Professor of East Asian Politics at Durham University, UK, and Director of its China centre. He has been publishing widely in the area of Chinese international relations. His latest book is entitled China Engages Global Governance: A New World Order in the Making? (co-authored with Pak K. Lee and Lai-Ha Chan, Routledge, 2012). He is curious about how Western classical music can merge with taiqi, Asian experiences can enhance our understanding of international relations, and biological science can inform social science.

Hyungsoo Kim

Extending his interest in environmental issues, Hyungsoo Kim began making documentaries on topics including woodland burials—for which he was awarded with a Korean Minister prize—and illegal whaling operations while he was still in high school. Along with Mincheol Jeong and Jaehyun Kim, he co-founded Tree Planet in 2010, which evolved from their project to help solve environmental problems by planting trees in real life through a video game. Not only was Tree Planet selected as the official mobile app of the G20 Seoul Summit and UNCCD, it has also attracted a cumulative total of over 1.3 million USD in corporate partnership advertisements, and has led to 500,000 trees being planted in 80 forests that have been created all over the world.

Jae Ho Chung

Dr. Jae Ho Chung is Professor of Political Science and International Relations and Director of the Program on US-China Relations at Seoul National University, Korea. He is a graduate of Seoul National University, Brown University, and the University of Michigan, where he received his Ph.D. in 1993. Dr. Jae Ho Chung is the author or editor of sixteen books, including Central Control and Local Discretion in China (Oxford University Press, 2000), Between Ally and Partner (Columbia University Press, 2007), Centrifugal Empire (Columbia University Press, forthcoming in 2016). Dr. Chung is a recipient of Seoul National University's Best Researcher Award in 2009 and the Korean Association for International Studies' Best Book Award in 2012.

Jin Hyung Lee

Dr. Jin Hyung Lee is Assistant Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Bioengineering, Neurosurgery, and Electrical Engineering (Courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University and Masters and Doctoral degree from Stanford, all in Electrical Engineering. She is a recipient of several awards including the 2010 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the 2011 NSF CAREER Award, the 2012 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the 2012 Epilepsy Therapy Project award, the 2013 Alzheimer’s Association New Investigator Award, and the 2014 IEEE EMBS BRAIN young investigator award. As an Electrical Engineer by training with an interest in Neuroscience research, her goal is to analyze, debug, and engineer the brain circuit through innovative technology.

Jun Seo Lee

As the CEO and Founder of ecojun company, Jun Seo Lee manages everything from the design to the development of environmentally-friendly products that create social value. The company is constantly looking for new ways to minimize the CO2 footprint of its entire manufacturing process, often by collaborating with other social enterprises. A portion of the proceeds from sales of ecojun's products goes to the Clean Drinking Water Campaign for Africa and also helps fund the development of cures for malaria and waterborne diseases. The company's core philosophy, its unique identity and, above all, its exceptionally well-designed products have earned ecojun international recognition and caught the attention of renowned industrial designer Karim Rashid, with whom ecojun signed a joint venture agreement in January 2015.

Jung-Hyeon Kim

Jung-Hyeon Kim formed an interest in social entrepreneurship in 2008 and has since worked to solve hearing impairment problems among the elderly; provide high-quality urban living quarters for the young; offer free education for students interested in fine arts; and arrange opportunities for indie bands to perform, to list just a few. He also briefly assisted the campaign office of the now president to formulate a youth policy plan. Kim serves as an advisor for a few investment firms as well. He took first place in the 2010 Social Venture Competition Korea, and a company he operated became the first Korean company to be B Corp-certified. In 2015, he became the first Korean to be named as one of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship's Social Entrepreneur of the Year.

Marvin Chun

Dr. Marvin Myungwoo Chun is an award-winning cognitive neuroscience researcher and psychology professor who received the highest teaching prize at Yale University. He is the Richard M. Colgate Professor of Psychology at Yale, with joint appointments in the Cognitive Science Program and the School of Medicine Department of Neurobiology. He also serves as the John B. Madden Master of Berkeley College. He received his B.A. from Yonsei University, his Ph.D. from MIT and his postdoctoral training at Harvard. His research has been honored with early career awards from the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological Association. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and as a scientific advisor on the NIKE (Sport) Performance Council.

Sanghun Jung

Sanghun Jung led a strategy and management innovation team in his 30s. Building on his work experience, he worked at the Work Together Foundation and The Hope Institute in his 40s, providing management consulting to youth social ventures and social enterprises. Jung also helped the Korean government, local governments and NGOs create human resource development roadmaps. Since 2014, he has been working as the Executive Director of 'There,' an institute that serves as a catalyst for social innovation by connecting creative minds with each other to form a network of innovators. The institute has been operating Seoul's Innovation Park—a 100,000 square meter complex created to foster social innovation projects—since 2015.

Senyon Choe

Dr. Senyon Choe moved to Northern California from Korea to study Biophysics and Medical Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Salk Institute in 1993 as the founding faculty member of its new Structural Biology Laboratory. His research group focused on understanding how cells talk to each other, and Dr. Choe made important contributions to engineer the biological messages. An extension of these works explores designing synthetic biologics to directly modulate stem cells and sick cells. His major honors include election in 1999 to the Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most recently, he founded the joint Center for Biosciences in Korea that focuses on protein engineering and developing new stem cell therapy, facilitating drug discovery for pharmaceutical industry.

Taeghwan Hyeon

Dr. Taeghwan Hyeon is Professor/SNU Distinguished Fellow at the Chemical and Biological Engineering of Seoul National University (SNU), and also Director of Center for Nanoparticle Research of Institute for Basic Science (IBS). For the last 17 years, he has been working on the synthesis and medical applications of uniform-sized nanoparticles at SNU, and was selected as one of the top 100 chemists by UNESCO&IUPAC in 2011. Since 2010, he has served as an Associate Editor of Journal of the American Chemical Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Materials Research Society (MRS). He received many awards including the Hoam Prize (2012, Samsung Hoam Foundation) and the POSCO-T. J. Park Award (2008).

Yunling Zhang

Dr. Zhang Yunling is Professor of International Economics, Academy Member and Director of International Studies at Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS), and a member of the National Committee of Chinese Political Consultant Conference. He also holds the position of President of China Association of Asia-Pacific Studies; Vice President of China PECC Committee; Vice President of China-ROK Friendship Association; Chairman of Research Center on China-ROK Relations, Shandong University. He previously served as Chairman of Joint Expert Group for Feasibility Study on EAFTA and Executive Chair of China-ROK Joint Expert Committee. He has been a member of Expert Group of CEPEA study since 2006 and Senior Adviser of China-ASEAN Expo since 2003.