Kim Jae-kyoung, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), has been named a fellow of the 2026 Asian Young Scientist Fellowship (AYSF), the university said on the 4th.
The AYSF is a privately funded research fellowship run by Future Science, a nonprofit organization based in Singapore. Each year it selects 12 young scientists who have launched independent research careers in Asia and who have produced outstanding results with the potential to open new fields of study. Each fellow receives a total of $100,000 (about 140 million won) in research funding over two years.
Kim is a neuroscientist studying how sleep and dreams shape memory and creativity. His research has examined how the brain organizes waking experiences and learning during sleep to form lasting memories. He has focused in particular on the role that brain activity during sleep plays not only in learning and memory formation but also in the recovery of function after brain injury. More recently, he has been expanding his work into dreams and creativity, treating dreams as a process through which the brain recombines past memories and experiences to generate new ideas, and seeking to identify the biological principles behind it.
"We sleep and dream every day, yet many questions remain unanswered about why dreams are necessary and how the sleeping brain produces new ideas," Kim said. "With this AYSF selection as a starting point, I will continue challenging research to uncover how sleep and dreams forge new connections between memory and experience and lead to creative thinking."
Kim joined the KAIST Department of Biological Sciences in 2023 and currently heads the Neural Processing Lab.
