In November 2017, the KAIST CBE Department and the Chemical Engineering Department at Tsinghua University held a joint workshop. The theme of the workshop was "Smart and Green Chemical Engineering", and it was held on Tsinghua campus, in Beijing, China. A total of seven professors from KAIST participated in this workshop. Although it was a one-day event, participants from both KAIST and Tsinghua had a great time, as new friendships were made, and many interesting research ideas were exchanged.

The workshop started with welcome addresses from both Ms. Bo Meng from Tsinghua's International Collaboration Office, and Professor Tiefeng Wang from Tsinghua's Chemical Engineering Department. Ms. Meng is an old friend of KAIST as she is also involved in the TKT (Tokyo Tech-KAIST-Tsinghua) CAMPUS Asia program, which facilitates exchange of students among the three institutions.

Following the welcome remarks, the department chairs from each university, Professor Jae W. Lee from KAIST and Professor Jinsong Zhao from Tsinghua, gave an informative introduction of their respective departments. Although the two departments were established at different times and had different histories, we learned that they actually shared many similar philosophies regarding both education and research.

Technical presentations from both KAIST and Tsinghua then filled the rest of the workshop. We listened to 13 very interesting technical talks. From the KAIST side: Professor Shin-Hyun Kim talked about structural coloration from colloidal assembly; Professor Jihan Kim talked about simulation studies on MOF (metal-organic framework); Professor Hyunjoo Lee talked about single-atom platinum catalysts for electrochemical reactions; Professor Sheng Li talked about the use of polydisperse block copolymer as soft photonics; Professor Yoosik Kim talked about quantitative approach to study biological systems; and finally Professor Eun Seon Cho talked about the use of hybrid nanomaterials for gas and molecular transport.

The day-long event was ended with a small gift exchange ceremony, where the two departments exchanged small token of appreciation for each other's participation in the workshop. Most importantly, the participants from both universities really enjoyed the time together, and decided to make the workshop into an annual event. The next one will be held in July 2018 at KAIST!