Prof. Young-Dae Gong from the Department of Chemistry at Dongguk University received a commendation from the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy at the Industrial Innovation Platform (I-Platform) vision declaration ceremony held at the Korea Institute for the Advancement of Technology on December 17.

Since 2010, Prof. Gong has worked on establishing the Center for Innovative Drug Library Research at Dongguk University as part of the “Industry-Academia-Research Consortium” (project budget: KRW 5 billion) sponsored by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

He was instrumental in building an innovation platform for equipment and developing a library for unique small drug-based organic molecules. Through this effort, 120 papers were published in internationally renowned journals, 85 patents were registered, and licensing deals were signed in 2019 to transfer commercial technologies.

In particular, he received the commendation for his contribution towards enhancing the global competitiveness of Korea's drug industry by developing innovative new drugs and for providing biotech startups and pharmaceutical companies with the knowledge and infrastructure support of the drug library and innovative equipment at the research center.