South Korea implemented the National Project towards Building World-Class Universities, (WCU) to meet a critical need to foster research in
key growth-generating fields.

Professor Revankar accepted an invitation from Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology, (POSTECH), to be one of the world-class scholars and researchers to develop world-class academic programs and departments in Korea. Revankar is an expert in nuclear based hydrogen production. His appointment is from March through June, which began this year, 2011 and runs through 2015.

Now back at Purdue from his first semester, he is energized from this intellectually stimulating and extraordinary experience. In his words, “I thought it would be a great experience, but it’s better than I thought!” When at POSTECH, Revankar conducts research, lectures, supervises and advises graduate students, writes research proposals and is also building a lab. In addition, he is giving seminars and collaborating with scientists at Korean national laboratories.

Professor Jae Sung Lee, of POSTECH, Department of Chemical Engineering invited Professor Revankar in May of 2010 to join the WCU team from POSTECH to establish a Division of Advanced Nuclear Engineering, (DANE) a new graduate program. In a highly competitive proposal process the team of 14 (seven POSTECH professors and six other international professors) wrote and submitted a proposal which competed with proposals from other outstanding teams in Korea. The requirements for proposals in this competition were comprised of a foreign scholar recruitment plan and a research proposal, which were reviewed and if passed, went on to a second review which was judged on the research achievements of each participant on the research team. The criteria for each team member included:

• number of articles published in top journals
• number of citations for these articles
• average number of citations per article
• major grants received and
• number of domestic and international patents awarded

Finally, the university’s sufficiency to support the research team and overall education and research infrastructure was evaluated. Approved proposals were then sent to be evaluated for viability by experts in the U.S. and Europe.

Dr. Revankar’s team, DANE was accepted in October of 2010. DANE has four areas:

• Nuclear Safety and Materials
• Radioactive Waste Management
• Nuclear Reactor Physics
• Nuclear Based Hydrogen Production

The DANE project was developed to strategically use current resources in the local community, such as a local steel processing plant, which will benefit from the products of research in nuclear based hydrogen production. A nuclear waste management company and a nuclear power plant will also benefit from the research at DANE.

Professor Revankar is excited to work with the top faculty and graduate students in this program, “Building this world-class program is hard work and challenging, but intellectually stimulating.” He particularly enjoys working with other outstanding researchers in his field.

Dr. Revankar was pleased to find that he had previously collaborated with some of the other researchers in other institutes in Korea and also on the DANE team. He didn’t know some of them were on the team until after he accepted. Dr. Moo Hwan Kim, the head of the DANE, Revankar considers, “...a good friend of mine.” Prof. Revankar has collaborated with him on projects as far back as 15 years ago.

The WCU project is designed to meet Korea’s critical need to foster research in key growth-generating fields. These world-class scholars and researchers are developing world-class academic programs and departments at Korean universities to ultimately lead to the transformation of Korean universities into research-oriented institutions with globally competitive standards.

Summer 2011