Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
기초과학연구원

South Korea

IBS was established in 2011 aiming at advancing the frontiers of knowledge and fostering leading scientists of tomorrow by pursuing excellence in basic science research. Since then, IBS has been providing infrastructure for long-term, large-scale, and group research as well as supporting autonomous research activities of researchers, focusing on exploration of creative knowledge. In 2018, IBS had moved to its new building in Daejeon, South Korea. Watch the tour video of our headquarters and some of our research centers.

As a basic science research institute representing Korea, IBS is running 30 Centers in physics, chemistry, mathematics, life sciences, and interdisciplinary areas as of January 2020 and planning to increase the number to 50. IBS has announced 2020 call for applications for IBS Research Center Directors and Chief Investigators. Applications will be accepted until February 29, 2020. For more information, please visit www.ibs.re.kr/eng/sub04_02_04.do.

The institute’s main philosophy is to select a world renowned scientist as a Center’s director and create an environment where the director can concentrate on his/her own creative research. That is because IBS believes that creativity can be maximized when excellent researchers focus on conducting challenging research in an autonomous research environment.

IBS has been generating research outcomes that attract world-wide attention and was named one of Nature Index Rising Stars 2016. Despite a short history, the institute is standing shoulder to shoulder with international basic science research institutes. With the 2018 completion of its new headquarters designated as an urban science park, IBS will maximize merits of group and interdisciplinary research as well as bring IBS’ research capabilities together. It will more actively recruit young researchers at home and abroad with its expansion, heralding an even brighter future.

Since 2016, IBS has been operating Young Scientists Fellowship (YSF) under the slogan ‘Initiate your own research at IBS. In order to intensify its support to grow the next-generation leaders of scientific investigators, IBS has been launching a new research unit called Pioneer Research Centers (PRC), a subset of the existing IBS HQ Centers since early 2019. PRCs consist of up to five Chief Investigators (CIs) each. A CI leads their own research group to pioneer new fields and focus on challenging research in the basic sciences. CIs are required to have scientific excellence equivalent to that of a principle investigator at a globally renowned research institute or to have great potential to reach the aforementioned level in the near future. IBS will continue its efforts to become a research hub where young scientists can devote themselves to their science with full autonomy and independence.

1 October 2018 - 30 September 2019

Region: Global
Subject/journal group: All

The table to the right includes counts of all research outputs for Institute for Basic Science (IBS) published between 1 October 2018 - 30 September 2019 which are tracked by the Nature Index.

Hover over the donut graph to view the FC output for each subject. Below, the same research outputs are grouped by subject. Click on the subject to drill-down into a list of articles organized by journal, and then by title.

Note: Articles may be assigned to more than one subject area.

Count	Share
341	94.06

Outputs by subject (Share)

Subject	Count	Share
Chemistry	144	40.47
Physical Sciences	184	48.33
Life Sciences	46	13.18
Earth & Environmental Sciences	15	2.39

Highlight of the month

Gut microbes reduce levels of allergy-inducing antibody

Young mice lacking the right gut bacteria are sensitive to allergens in food. This suggests that there could be a connection between the gut microbiomes of infants and the development of food allergies early in life.

Recent research has consistently pointed to a link between gut bacteria and food allergies, but the details remain unclear.

Now, a team led by researchers at the Institute for Basic Science in the Republic of Korea has found that exposing young microbe-free mice to a normal diet caused them to produce elevated levels of immunoglobulin E—an antibody implicated in food allergies. In contrast, another group of microbe-free mice that were fed a diet free of anything capable of triggering the immune system did not have abnormal immunoglobulin E levels.

This raises the question of whether a diet free of food allergens may help to prevent the onset of allergies in young children who have been treated with antibiotics.

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