SNU selected 10 faculty members with excelling research results based on creativity and active work as the winners of the 2020 SNU Academic Research Education Award (Research Division).

Award recipients consisted of 3 from the humanities and social sciences, 4 in science and engineering, and 3 in medicine. The lists is as follows.

▲Professor Jinwoo Kim (Department of Economics, College of Social Sciences) ▲Professor Myungshin Im (Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Natural Sciences) ▲Professor Kyoung Mu Lee (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering) ▲Professor Tae-jin Yang (Department of Plant Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) ▲Professor Youngro Byun (College of Pharmacy) ▲Professor Doo Hyun Chung (Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medecine)▲Professor Ho Kim (Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Public Health) ▲Professor Seog-Bae Oh (School of Dentistry) ▲Professor Jaeyong Song (College of Business Administration) ▲Professor Jaemin Lee (School of Law). The award ceremony was held at the Seoul National University's Center for Teaching and Learning on the 9th. This year, the ceremony was broadcasted in real time on the Seoul National University official PR channel.

The SNU Academic Research Award was established in 2008 to encourage research and to improve the research strength of SNU. Beginning in 2018, it was combined with SNU Education Award, and awards are presented as either being of the research or education division of the SNU Academic Research and Education Award.

Professor Jinwoo Kim has internationally recognized research achievements in the field of micro-economics. He presented a mathematical model for the mechanism to allocate resources more efficiently and reliably in a market where perfect competition does not hold. This was published in the world’s top economics journal. For such achievements, he received the Maeil Business Economist Award (매경이코노미스트상) in 2013 and Dasan Young Economist Award (다산 젊은 경제학상). He was elected to the Asia Standing Committee of Econometric Society, the top academic organization in the field of theoretical economics.

Professor Myungshin Im has devoted himself in the advance of Korea’s observational astronomy. He led the newborn field of research in multi-signal astronomy and contributed to uncovering in what conditions two neutron stars merge. Furthermore, he published various research results including the discovery of early space quasars, in more than 200 papers published in SCI-level journals. In recognition of his achievements, he won the 2017 Korea Science Journalist Association Scientist of the Year Award and the 2019 Korean Astronomical Society Academic Award.

Professor Kyoung Mu Lee published more than 220 papers in the field of AI and computer vision and was cited more than 13 thousand times in the last five years according to Google Scholar. Recognized for his academic achievements, he served as the first Asian vice editor-in-chief of IEEE TPAMI, the best academic journal in AI, and the general chair of ICCV 2019. Furthermore, he founded the Korean Computer Vision Society and as president, he played a key role in raising the level of Korea’s AI and computer vision to meet global standards. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Scientist of the Month Award (이달의 과학기술인상) in 2018 and the red strips of the Order of Service Merit in 2020.

Professor Kyung-moo Lee has published 220 papers in the field of AI and computer vision, and has achieved citations of 13,000 times in the last five years based on Google Scholar (Google Scala). As a result of his academic achievements, he was the first vice-editor of IEEE TPAMI, the world's best academic journal in the field of AI, and served as the chairman of the ICCV2019, the first vice-editor of the academic conference. In addition, he founded the Korea Computer Vision Society in 2016 and played a major role in raising the status of the domestic AI and computer vision fields, which were now barren as president, to the world level. In recognition of this, he was awarded the Ministry of Science, ICT, and ICT's Science and Technology Award of the Month in 2018, and the Government's Hong Jo Geun-jeong Medal in 2020.

Professor Tae-jin Yang published 210 papers related to medicinal plants and genomics. He was the world’s first to decode the genome of ginseng and lay the foundation for genome breeding and advance in the industry. For his achievement, he was awarded the 2018 Sangnok Research Grand Prize (상록연구대상), the Ginseng Society Academic Award, and the 2019 Agriculture, Fisheries Food Science and Technology Grand Prize(농림수산식품과학기술대상) President Service Merit Medal. In addition, he also concentrated on the advance of practical applications including

research on the collection, development, evolution, and genome breeding of valuable resource plants and the barcoding technology of medicinal plants. Currently, he is serving as the president of the Korean Society of Breeding Sciences, the head of the recently founded Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Bioresources, and the head of the BK21 business unit.

Professor Youngro Byun was the pioneering generation of research in the drug delivery system that maximizes the effectivity of drugs in the field of pharmacy. He contributed significantly to establishing the field in Korea. Furthermore, he strived for the commercialization of the field, such as by achieving four transfers of technology on new drugs. For his achievements, he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea in 2017 and the Korean Academy of Science and Technology in 2019, and since 2017, he has served as the deputy editor-in-chief of Biomaterials, a top international journal.

Professor Doo Hyun Chung has been devoted to researching immunological mechanisms for various diseases while serving as a professor in pathology. He made a great contribution to raising the level of immunology in Korea, especially through disease-centered immunology studies using mice. He also organized a joint symposium of Korea and Japan, and has been working to encourage international exchange among subsequent generations of academics for the eighth year. In recognition of these academic achievements, he won the Pfizer Award in 2008 and the Shim Ho-Seob Medical Award in 2011, and was elected as a full member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2018.

Professor Ho Kim, in charge of public health statistics, has conducted research on the assessment of the health impact of air pollution and climate change and has contributed greatly to research on public health methodology based on statistics. He also served as the quality management committee director for community health surveys by the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention and has devoted himself to gathering basic health data in Korea. He has published a number of books including Health Statistics and more than 300 papers, and is currently a member of the National Academy of Medicine of Korea and the Korean Academy of Environmental Science.

Professor Seog-Bae Oh concentrated on research that reveals the crux of human pain through neurophysiology, clarifying the mechanism of pain and developing new chronic pain treatment methods. He published papers in journals including Cell and Neuron, a leading journal in the field of life science, and contributed greatly to raising the status of pain research in Korea by establishing an academic group of Korean researchers in the field of pain in 2010 and successfully holding an international academic conference in 2019. He won the 2012 Yudang Academic Award (유당학술상)of the Korean Physiological Society and the 2019 Joseph Jin Chang Academic Award (장진학술상)of the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences.

Professor Jaeyong Song has published a number of papers in top journals while researching business strategy and international management. He is the first professor at a Korean university to be elected and serve as the chairman of the International Management Division of the Academy of Management. He is a fellow of the Academy of International Business, the world’s top conference in international management, and a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. He was awarded the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration’s Midsize Business Scholar Award (중견경영학자상) and Maeil Business’s Chung Jin-ki Media and Culture Award in 2014 and is an editor of the Journal of International Business Studies, a top journal in business administration.

Professor Jaemin Lee, responsible for lectures and research in the field of international law, is recognized overseas for his academic achievements through his contributions and academic activities in major international journals. UNCITRAL (UN Commissions on International Trade Law) working group WTO subsidy settlement committee and other international organizations. He served as the international director and executive director of the Korean Society of International Law, the editor-in-chief of the Seoul International Law Academy, president of the Korean Society of International Economic Law. He is currently serving as the president of the Korean Society of International Economic Law. In recognition of his consistent academic achievements, he won the 2016 Korean Society of International Economic Law Academic Award and the 2019 Korean Society of International Law “Hyeonmin International Law Academic Award(현민국제법학술상)''.

Source: http://ee.snu.ac.kr/community/news?bm=v&bbsidx=50693

Translated by: Jee Hyun Lee, English Editor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, jlee621@snu.ac.kr