During his Ph.D. research he explored self-assembly of benzamide-containing molecules under the supervision of Prof. Sang Youl Kim. He also participated in international collaborations by visiting Prof. Masa-aki Kakimoto’s group at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan and Prof. Craig J. Hawker’s group at University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. After receiving Ph.D., he spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow in the same group and then moved to Prof. Marc A. Hillmyer’s group at the University of Minnesota in 2009 where he worked on nanoporous polymers derived from block polymer precursors. He started his own career in 2013 as an assistant professor in the graduate school of nanoscience and technology at KAIST, and now an associate professor in the department of chemistry.
His research interests include controlled polymer synthesis, polymer/small molecule self-assembly, and porous polymers for environmental and energy applications. He has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, ACS Macro Letters, and Macromolecules, and also written a book chapter in “Submicron Porous Materials” published by Springer. He has co-organized an ACS PMSE symposium in ACS 2018 Spring, and has served as a chairperson in ACS (2018 Spring) and Pacifichem (2015) meetings. He is a recipient of Wiley-PSK JPS Young Scientist Award (2015) and KAIST EWon Assistant Professorship (2015-2018). In 2016, he was named as one of “Asia’s Rising Scientists” by Asian Scientist Magazine. He also won lectureship awards from the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (“Invited Lecturer from Young Scientists”, 2017) and the Chemical Society of Japan (“Lectureship Award of Asian International Symposium”, 2019). His interviews have been featured in Wiley Asia Blog (2015), Asian Scientist Magazine (2016), and Nature (2018).