From September 14 to 17, 2025, the 10th SKKU & HUST Bilateral Graduate Student Symposium was successfully held in Suwon, South Korea. Co-organized by the School of Chemical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) and the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), the event brought together over a hundred faculty and student representatives from both universities. Participants engaged in in-depth exchanges and discussions on cutting-edge fields in chemistry and chemical engineering, including energy, biology, and materials.
On the morning of September 15, the opening ceremony took place in the Conference Hall of the SKKU Library. Attendees included Professor Heeyeop Chae, Director of BK21Plus at SKKU; Professor Chan-Hwa Chung, Director of the ERC; Professor Taesung Kim, Dean of the College of Engineering; Professor Jin Woong Kim, Dean of the School of Chemical Engineering; as well as HUST professors including Professor Bien Tan, Dean and Professor Qiang Zhao, Vice Dean of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.
During the opening ceremony, Professor Heeyeop Chae, Professor Taesung Kim, and Professor Jin Woong Kim delivered addresses. They reviewed the decade-long history of academic exchanges between the two universities, affirmed the friendly cooperative relationship established, expressed expectations for deepening future collaboration, and wished the Symposium a complete success. In his speech, Professor Bien Tan highlighted the fruitful outcomes achieved through the partnership, noting substantial progress in scientific research cooperation. He thanked Sungkyunkwan University for its efforts in hosting the event and formally invited Korean faculty and students to attend the 11th HUST & SKKU Bilateral Graduate Student Symposium in Wuhan next year. Professor Tan expressed hope for further expanding the dimensions of cooperation, deepening collaborative scientific innovation and joint talent cultivation, to jointly address global scientific challenges.
The Symposium featured plenary invited reports from seven scholars, including Professor Wang Deli, Professor Yang Xuan, and Professor Tang Conghui from HUST, alongside scholars from South Korea, the United States, and Japan. The reports covered frontier research areas such as electrochemical medical systems, nanobiomedicine, ordered intermetallic compound electrocatalysis, flexible electronic devices, colloidal nanoparticle stability, advanced semiconductor packaging, and sustainable catalysis, fully showcasing the latest advancements in these fields. Additionally, graduate students from both universities delivered 28 high-level oral presentations across three parallel sessions focused on biology, energy, and materials, demonstrating the innovative thinking and research capabilities of young researchers. Six students (including three from HUST) received Best Presentation Awards for their outstanding performances.
At the closing ceremony, Professor Heeyeop Chae, Professor Jin Woong Kim, and Professor Bien Tan jointly presented awards to the winning students, commending the quality and delivery of their presentations at the Symposium. They also expressed gratitude to all participating faculty and students and looked forward to closer cooperation between the two universities in academic exchanges and project collaboration in the future.
Since establishing their partnership in 2015, the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at HUST and the School of Chemical Engineering at SKKU have collaborated for a decade. Together, they have established the China-Korea Joint Research Center for Functional Polymer Materials and Devices, co-organized special issues for top international journals on multiple occasions, and maintained an annual rotation for hosting the graduate student academic Symposium. This has created a stable, high-level platform for academic exchange for young talents in the chemical engineering field of both countries. Over the past ten years, the Symposium has become a significant hallmark of the collaboration between the two institutions, continuously driving deeper and more substantive progress in joint scientific innovation and talent cultivation, highlighting the broad impact and profound potential of international cooperation and academic exchange.
