Leading scholars and experts from around the world who are using artificial intelligence to accelerate new scientific discoveries are gathering in Seoul. The Ministry of Science and ICT (led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon) announced that the first ‘AI4Sci Korea 2026’ international conference will be held over five days, from September 27 to October 1, at the Dragon City Hotel in Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
 [코리안투데이] Announcement of the first ‘AI4Sci Korea 2026’ international conference © 장형임 기자 |
This conference is the first international academic conference held in Korea in the field of AI for Science, and it is also the largest academic event of its kind in the world. It is co-hosted by the Applied AI Society (AI Frenz), the Korea Science AI Forum, and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT. The organizing committee is co-chaired by Professor Lim Kyung-tae of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Professor Seok Chaok of Seoul National University. Eleven leading academic organizations representing their respective fields also took part, including the Korean Physical Society, the Korean Chemical Society, the Korean Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers, the Korean BCI Society, the Korean Nuclear Society, the Korean Society of Climate Change Research, the Polymer Society of Korea, the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials, and the Korean Society for Biodesign.
This year’s main theme is ‘Autonomous Research Agents and AI-Driven Scientific Discovery.’ The program is built around two pillars: research on autonomous AI agents that plan and carry out research processes on their own, and convergence research that applies artificial intelligence to each scientific field. Some 600 researchers and industry experts from 19 countries will attend, and about 220 accepted papers will be presented through oral and poster sessions. The sessions are divided into 15 fields, including AI scientists and agents, AI policy, and ethics and governance, as well as life sciences, materials and chemistry, semiconductors and displays, nuclear energy and fusion, earth science, mathematics and computational science, mechanical engineering, energy and environment, autonomous laboratories, industrial applications, physics, and brain-computer interfaces.
In the opening keynote address, Professor Seok Chaok of Seoul National University’s Department of Chemistry will present convergence research between chemistry and molecular science and AI as a leading example, examining the results AI is producing in research settings. Thomas Zacharia, senior vice president at AMD and former director of the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will speak on ‘The Age of Autonomous Discovery,’ and Lim Woo-hyung, co-director of the LG AI Research Institute, will introduce the changes that science and technology AI foundation models will bring to the research environment. Twenty-three speakers, including Professor Juan de Pablo of New York University in the United States, will give keynote lectures, and counting the invited talks, some 80 speakers from 10 countries will present their latest research findings.
A policy forum will also be held to introduce the government’s ‘K-Moonshot’ and trends in science and technology AI policy across various countries. In particular, in connection with the ‘7 SEED Projects,’ national advanced technology strategic initiatives aimed at proactively fostering next-generation growth engines, government-funded research institutes and companies will share real-world cases of AI use in key fields such as small modular reactors (SMRs), nuclear fusion, and advanced bio. Side events include an ‘AI Art for Science’ exhibition expressing research achievements as AI-generated images, a ‘Harness Engineering’ course by Kakao on using AI coding agents, and a course by NVIDIA on using ‘PhysicsNeMo,’ an AI development tool grounded in the laws of physics. Following up on the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed last April between the Ministry of Science and ICT and Google DeepMind, the two organizations will co-host a special session, and an AI hackathon applying AI agents across the entire R&D process, hosted by the National AI Research Center for Science (NAIS), will also take place.
The academic events run from September 28 to 30, with the AI Art exhibition (September 27) and the hackathon (October 1) taking place before and after. The Ministry of Science and ICT will also pursue convergence research projects involving industry, academia, and research institutes, centered on the National AI Research Center for Science, so that this exchange leads to actual joint research. The plan is to verify the potential of convergence research through small-scale exploratory studies, and to link outstanding projects to follow-up research to support their application and dissemination in the field.
Co-chair Seok Chaok emphasized the importance of science and technology AI, saying, ‘By converging AI, scientists are taking on new scientific discoveries that were previously difficult to approach, such as understanding complex natural phenomena and finding new materials.’ Co-chair Lim Kyung-tae said, ‘As machine learning achievements in each scientific field and autonomous research agent technology come together in one place for the first time, this will be a starting point for joint research that transcends fields.’ Koo Hyuk-chae, First Vice Minister of Science and ICT, added, ‘The government will connect and open up science and technology AI resources such as research data, GPUs, and AI models to drive AI-based science and technology innovation, and on this basis accelerate the achievement of the 12 K-Moonshot missions in bio, future energy, and other areas,’ and expressed hope that ‘this conference will establish itself as a leading global exchange platform connecting domestic researchers with the world’s science and technology community.’
For researchers, this conference is meaningful in that scattered experiences of AI use across each scientific field are shared in one place. If artificial intelligence research that had been confined to specific fields crosses the boundaries of those fields and leads to collaboration, the results could become a foundation that accelerates research in areas close to citizens’ lives, such as new drugs, materials, and energy.
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