Lotte Group to donate $10.4 mn to KAIST to build R&D, design centers

Lotte Corp. announced on Monday that it will donate 14 billion won ($10.4 million) to the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) to build a research and development (R&D) center as well as a design center. 

Back in February, the South Korean conglomerate’s CEO Shin Dong-bin met with KAIST President Lee Kwang-hyung at the Daejeon campus. 

“The center will be a research hub that transcends industrial-academic boundaries and we aim to complete its construction in the latter half of 2025,” a Lotte employee told The Korea Economic Daily. 

Ten affiliates under the Lotte Group will participate in the fundraising, including Lotte Corp., Lotte Chemical Corp., and Lotte Fine Chemical. 

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST will run the R&D center with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality. 

In particular, the research center will focus its efforts on areas of bio-sustainability, carbon neutrality materials and healthcare. 

The research findings will be commercialized in collaboration with the Lotte Group. 

The design center will be managed by the university's industrial design department, which will encompass an AI and data design lab, a metaverse design lab and more. 

The Lotte Group has been strengthening its collaboration with KAIST in recent years. 

Last year, the holding company of Lotte Group hired designer Bae Sang-min, an industrial design professor at KAIST, as the head of its design management center. 

Lotte Chemical, for its part, set up a joint research center with KAIST in January.

Write to Jong-Kwan Park at pjk@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.