The research areas for the Ewha Global Top 5 Project (Ewha-GT5) for 2013 were selected on Feb. 26. The Ewha-GT5 is a project to discover five special research areas that will acknowledge Ewha as a world-class institution, led by the Office of Research.
The project’s main goal is to be the best in Korea and rank Ewha among the top 50 universities in the world with the selected five research areas.
Two categories fall under the project, the Ewha Global Frontier and Ewha Raw Diamond which now have three and five researches ongoing, respectively. Ewha is investing 10 billion won for three years to financially support the researches and help the scholars reify their ideas and plans since 2011.
The research areas were accepted through four general steps; submission of applications, evaluation of the proposals, overall review, and the approval of Ewha president Kim Sun-uk.
In the process of submitting the applications, each research team will first decide on what category its objectives suit the best, the Ewha Global Frontier or the Ewha Raw Diamond.
The Ewha Global Frontier is for the researches that have excellent results, competence and the credibility that they will become internationally acknowledged within three years.
The Ewha Raw Diamond, as implied in the name, is for the researches that have potential to shine and receive spotlight in the future. Thus, teams subjected to this category were selected based on concreteness of their proposals and the possibility of realization.
One of the two categories of the project, Ewha Global Frontier, consists of the Female Brain, Female and Children Special Disease Frontier Research System Development, and Primate Research Institute of Cognition and Ecology.
The remaining five researches that belong to Ewha Raw Diamond are Smart Learning Service Design and Development System, Bisphosphonate Related Osteonecrosis of the Jaw Close Examination Mechanism and Cure Development, Social Science of Empathy, Ewha School of Art and Character, and Rebuilding the East Asia as Integrated Historical Space.
One of the projects that belongs to special education area selected in 2011 is the Autism Spectrum Disorder in Ewha, which supports autistic people by holding design schools, contest and exhibitions.
“Ewha has been concentrating on improving the research competence field since president Kim’s inauguration,” said an official of the Office of Research.
“To strengthen Ewha’s competence in research, full support is given to potential research groups, and all available resources are provided to maintain the school’s academic strengths. We hope that more projects aside from the Ewha-GT5 will be created to advocate diverse studies and let Ewha grow into an excellent research-based university.”