New KOFST President Pledges Financial Transparency for Member Organizations

President Kwon Oh-nam. Courtesy of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies

Professor Kwon Oh-nam of Seoul National University has been inaugurated because the twenty second president of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST).

KOFST introduced on the ninth that Professor Kwon was inaugurated because the twenty second president on the twenty sixth of final month. Her three-year time period will final till February 2029.

President Kwon graduated from Ewha Womans University with a level in science training, acquired her grasp’s diploma from Seoul National University, and earned a Ph.D. in arithmetic from Indiana University within the United States. She has been a professor at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University for over 30 years. She has additionally served because the president of the Association of Korean Woman Scientists and Engineers and because the appearing vice-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology. She can also be the present president of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.

In her inaugural deal with, President Kwon introduced the ‘SCALE-UP KOFST’ imaginative and prescient, which goals to embody 604 member organizations and 5 million science and know-how professionals. This signifies an intent to raise the federation’s stature moderately than merely growing its measurement. Specifically, she introduced plans to kind a ‘sixtieth Anniversary Future Strategy Committee’ to chart a course for the subsequent 60 years and to create a company the place small educational societies, in addition to regional and younger scientists and engineers, usually are not marginalized. 

She additionally pledged to increase the federation’s self-sufficient income base by way of industry-academia cooperation and personal partnerships, and to transparently disclose your entire monetary operation course of to member organizations.

The twenty second management staff is marked by a personnel reshuffle targeted on innovation and inclusion. Among the 88 executives, the proportion of girls has been elevated to about 25%, and the share of executives of their 40s and 50s has been raised to almost 40%. Unusually, the federation has additionally moved away from a Seoul-centric focus, allocating 52% of govt positions—greater than half the whole—to fifteen regional representatives.

Fourteen vice presidents have been appointed, together with Professor Kang Keon-Wook of Seoul National University College of Medicine, President Kwon Jin-hoe of Gyeongsang National University, former Minister of Science and ICT Lim Hyesook, Professor Chang Byung-tak of Seoul National University, President Oh Sang-rok of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and President Yoon Ji-woong of the Science and Technology Policy Institute.

President Kwon emphasised, “The research ecosystem is unstable, and the environment for young researchers to take on challenges freely is still insufficient.” She added, “KOFST must transform from an organization ‘for’ science and technology into a platform that opens the future ‘with’ science and technology.”