Sung-Chul Shin
Professor Sung-Chul Shin is the 16th president of KAIST. President Shin is a renowned physicist and a leader in higher education. He is also the first alumnus to serve as the president of KAIST.
President Shin is committed to multidisciplinary education, convergence research, and globalization, pursuing initiatives to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Prior to being selected as the president of KAIST in February of 2017, he led the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) for six years from 2011. As the founding president of the newly-established institute, he drove innovative initiatives to establish DGIST as one of the nation’s leading research universities.
President Shin first joined the KAIST faculty in 1989. From the early 1990s, he held key administrative positions including Dean of Planning, Dean of the International Office, and Vice Dean of Student Affairs. He also served as Vice President for two years from 2004.
A graduate of applied physics from Seoul National University, President Shin earned his MS degree in condensed matter physics at KAIST in 1977. After finishing his Ph.D. in material physics at Northwestern University in 1984, he worked at Eastman Kodak Research Labs as a senior researcher for five years.
An accomplished scholar in the field of nanoscience, President Shin’s research focuses on the artificial synthesis and characterization of magnetic materials, magnetic anisotropy, and magneto-optical phenomena. Especially, he played a pioneering role in the research of nanospinics, working as the founding director of the Center for Nanospinics of Spintronic Materials from 1998 to 2005 and the Institute of Nanoscience and Technology from 2001 to 2003 at KAIST. He is author of over 310 journal papers while holding 37 patents and has supervised more than 80 MS, Ph.D., and postdoctoral scholars.
President Shin has been serving as a board member of the Center for the 4IR Global Network Advisory at the World Economic Forum since 2018. He also has served on the board of the Agency for Defense Development since 2014. He has also been deeply involved in developing national strategy and policymaking for science and technology while serving as the vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology (PACST) from 2013 to 2016.
President Shin has held numerous fellowships and received scholarly honors such as the AUMS (Asian Union of Magnetics Societies) Award in 2016, the Supreme Scientist Award and Order of Science and Technology Merit Changjo Medal which were conferred by Korean government in 2012 and 2007 respectively, and awards from the Korean Physical Society in 2006 and the National Academy of Sciences of Korea in 2009.
A fellow in the American Physical Society (APS) since 2008, he was the president of the Korean Physical Society from 2011 to 2012 and the Korean Magnetics Society from 2009 to 2010. He also served as chairman of the International Conference on Magnetism (ICM2012) and has been on the editorial board of several journals including J. Magnetism and Magnetic Materials.