In celebrating the 5th anniversary of its foundation, IBS set forth an “IBS Initiative” earlier this year. It has three action plans: “Increasing opportunities for young talent”, “Building global leadership” and “Strengthening institutional identity,” which aim at making a new leap. In an effort to implement the first action plan, the 1st recruitment of the Young Scientist Fellowship (YSF) is ongoing.

The YSF program is a great opportunity for young, promising researchers to grow into major research leaders in the basic science.

The biggest merit of the YSF is that it grants autonomy to researchers so that they can conduct research on topics of their choice. By joining the YSF, researchers can organize and operate their own small research group based on their own original plan.

These YSF fellows are independent of their center directors’ supervision and free to use the state-of-the-art research infrastructure and equipment of IBS. There will be also great synergy and room for collaboration between YSF fellows and other outstanding researchers within their centers.

Once selected, these young researchers are supported for a three-year term with a possibility of a two-year extension depending on reviews. They are granted sizable research budgets ranging from KRW 150 million to 300 million; up to an annual average of KRW 300 million for experimental fields and up to an annual average of KRW 200 million for theoretical fields. After YSF program ends, these researchers are eligible for the IBS Career Development Awards (CDA). The CDA is designed to fund post-YSF research projects to ensure the continuity of research for YSF fellows.  

▲ IBS is recruiting applicants for the YSF. More information is available on the IBS website. 

The YSF selection procedure is two-fold: In phase one, applicants are screened for an in-depth evaluation based on their letters of intent. In phase two, selected applicants, whose full proposals are examined, are evaluated based on their on-site interviews and presentations.

“The YSF allows young researchers to pursue their full potential at IBS,” said IBS President KIM Doochul. “These young researchers will grow into future research leaders and become key researchers at major universities and research institutes across the world.”   

More information is available on the IBS website, www.ibs.re.kr/ysf. Letters of intent for phase one screening will be collected via email to ysf@ibs.re.kr. The closing date is July 31.  

The YSF program is an upgraded version of IBS’s previous young researchers program called the Young Scientist Program (YS). Research Fellow YOUN Sung Woo, as a YS fellow is dedicating himself to the hunt for the axion, dark matter candidate at the IBS Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research(CAPP) led by Director Yannis K. SEMERTZIDIS. He spoke about his experience as a YS fellow.

▲ Since selected as a YS in 2014, Dr. Youn has been building experiments to search for dark matter candidate axions at CAPP.  

1. What made you apply for the YS program?
The CERN’s discovery of Higgs boson in 2012 heightened interest in dark matter around the Universe. I was one of them and  heard of an IBS center devoted to axion searches. While considering to join the CAPP, I had an opportunity to meet Director Semertzidis, who introduced me to the YS program. The vision of the program, nurturing next generation research leaders, was the most attractive factor to me, and the independence in research and exceptional support in funding were also very charming.

2. The YS program encourages researchers to foster leadership in their research programs.  So far, what has been its best part for you?
Cooperating closely with the research center is necessary, but organizing and leading my own research group as a principal investigator (PI) for independent research project is a big advantage. The role of PI itself provides me with a sense of great responsibility and broad perspective in leading a research project. I feel comfortable in conducting research projects as planned. The considerable funding minimizes budgetary constraints in purchasing necessary equipment.

3. What are you investigating at CAPP now?
A typical approach in axion search experiments adopts microwave resonant cavities to scan accessible frequency ranges. One of the ways to increase the experimental sensitivity is to increase the volume of the cavity. However, this conflicts with the fact that exploring higher frequency ranges requires smaller cavity size. The most intuitive solution to this problem is to bundle small multiple cavities together and combined the individual outputs ensuring phase matching of the coherent axion signal. My project is dedicated to enhance the sensitivity by developing a mechanism for phase-matching of multiple-cavity systems and thus increasing effective volume of the resonant detector.

4. What is your future research goal?
I hope that my project helps detect the promising dark matter axion. Our detector comprising of multiple resonators, is a very fascinating methodology for axion searches. By making the detector practically useful in scanning the frequency ranges currently off-limits, I want to also be part of discovering meaningful knowledge.