On April 11, UNIST and the University of Ulsan held their first meeting to promote the HST (Health Sciences and Technology) program for the nurturing of Korea’s next-generation of physician-scientists.

Through this meeting, UNIST laid the foundation for future academic collaborations between the UNIST College of Information and Biotechnology and the University of Ulsan College of Medicine, which will begin in earnest in September 2023. On this day, officials from two colleges set the detailed direction of curriculum development for HST program through the mutual exchange of opinions.

The College of Information and Biotechnology at UNIST has already begun working on developing a total of seven essential courses for the MD-PhD cultivation program, which includes, but not limited to, Medical AI Application Course, Statistics for Medical Science, Introduction to Genomics, Introduction to Medical Imaging, Introduction to Rehabilitation & Regenerative Engineering, Introduction to Brain and Cognitive Engineering, and Introduction to Precision Medicine. Through this meeting, the responsible faculty members gave a brief overview of the key contents for each course.

This meeting has been attended by Dean Seong Who Kim of University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Department of Chair Hyung Joon Cho of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST, Director Kyung A Son of UNIST Innovative Education Center, and key officials from both organizations.

“We hope that the ‘UNIST―U of U College of Medicine HST Program’ will proceed successfully,” said Dean Seong Who Kim (University of Ulsan College of Medicine).

“We hope that UNIST and the University of Ulsan will serve as a successful convergence education model for an engineering-based medical school, as well as a project-based learning,” noted Department Chair Hyung Joon Cho of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST.

Meanwhile, in July 2022, UNIST embarked on a strategic partnership with the University of Ulsan for the cultivation of future physician-scientists. This program, which is set to begin in September 2023, will be the nation’s first undergraduate-level MD-PhD cultivation program. About 40 premedical students from the University of Ulsan College of Medicine will be taking classes and conducting research with students at UNIST, every two semesters. Based on these experiences, UNIST will actively support prospective students who are interested in science and engineering to grow into physician-scientists.