Ji-Won Son

Prof. Dr. Ji-Won Son is a principal researcher at the Energy Materials Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and a professor of Graduate School of Energy and Environment (KU-KIST Green School), Korea University. She was born in 1971, Seoul, and studied Inorganic Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, Korea. She received BS and MS degrees at SNU. During her master course, she studied the sintering mechanism of oxides used for electronic applications. Afterwards, she entered the graduate school of Stanford University, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering and received the Ph. D. degree in 2005. Her Ph. D. topic was about oxide thin film materials for optical applications. Based on her expertise both on oxide bulk materials and thin film materials, she has worked on implementation of thin film and nanostructure materials to high-temperature operating solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) since she joined the SSEM&S Lab at KIST, 2005. By realizing multi-scale structure at the anode, she successfully achieved both the high performance at lower operating temperatures and the thermomechanical stability of the thin film and nanostructure-base anode-supported SOFCs. For her achievement, she received the Women of the Year Award in Science and Technology in Korea, 2013, the Prime Minister Award, 2016, and the Minister of Science and ICT(MSIT) Award for Research Innovation 2020.