Korean Physical Society Going Together with Members via Participation and Care
KWON PARK, WONHEE LEE, TAKHEE LEE
Professor Bum-Hoon Lee (Sogang University, Seoul) started his two-year term as the 28th President of the Korean Physical Society (KPS) on January 1, 2019. The 28th Executive Body of the KPS is composed of, among others, the Executive Vice-President, Professor Suklyun Hong (Sejong Univ., Seoul), the Secretary of General Affairs, Professor Maeng-Je Seong (Chung-Ang Univ., Seoul), and the Treasurer, Professor Yunsang Lee (Soongsil Univ., Seoul).
Following are the main points of President Lee's inaugural speech regarding the future emphases in the policies of the KPS during his term.
1. Serious effort will be devoted to secure research funds for basic research and their balanced distribution. In particular, one of the main problems in the national R&D policies of South Korea is that the total number of research grants is much smaller than the number of individual researchers in the nation. To overcome this problem, it is imperative to increase the total budget for basic research in physics and to improve the national R&D policies. Some possible directions for improvement include: introducing block funding, increasing the number of individual grants, reducing the competition ratio for grant applications, securing research grants for private and regional universities, and protecting neglected disciplines in physics.
2. The KPS will play an important role as bastion stronghold to protect physics departments in the nation by executing various proactive programs to improve the quality of physics education. For various reasons, the status of physics as a core subject in middle and high school curricula has diminished in recent years. It is crucial to strengthen the quality of physics education in secondary schools and universities for the survival of physics departments. To this end, the KPS will seek out ways to improve the quality of physics education by engaging in more close collaboration with middle and high school teachers and educators. Also, the KPS will invigorate the existing public outreach programs.
3. The KPS will do its best to ensure that its academic journals and meetings are successful and receive a higher level of recognition. Publishing journals and hosting meetings are the two main functions of the KPS. The KPS has two SCI journals under its wings: The Journal of the Korean Physical Society (JKPS) and Current Applied Physics (CAP). Furthermore, the KPS hosts two KPS meetings per year, covering the entire range of disciplines in physics. To enhance the quality of the KPS research journals and the KPS meetings, the KPS will also pursue new avenues for change via internationalization, decentralization, and specialization.
4. The KPS aspires to be the physical society, where researchers from all areas of the physics community including governmental institutes and the industrial sectors, can participate together. Understanding that the governmental institutes are facing various serious problems (including the absence of long-term research support, job insecurity for temporary research positions, etc.), the KPS will make every effort to help in the eradication of these problems. The KPS will strive to make the atmosphere of the community more inviting so that researchers working in the industrial sectors can participate in the KPS activities more actively. Also, under the banner of "Woman in Physics," the KPS supports the increase in opportunities for female researchers and students; this support accordingly extends to encourage women who are physicists to play more extensive leadership roles in the physics community.
5. The 28th executive body of the KPS will be transparent and open embracing all KPS members representing diverse backgrounds, regardless of region, gender, and discipline.
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