The Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Chang-Jin "CJ" Kim

Distinguished Professor; Volgenau Endowed Chair in Engineering

Micro- and Nano-Manufacturing Lab; California NanoSystems Institute

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department; Bioengineering Department

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Dr. CJ Kim is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Volgenau Endowed Chair in Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with a main appointment in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. He received B.S. from Seoul National University, M.S. from Iowa State University, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and had a postdoctoral visit to the University of Tokyo before joining UCLA in 1993. Directing the Micro and Nano Manufacturing Lab, Prof. Kim performs research in micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) with a focus on utilizing surface tension as a mechanical force. The recipient of Research Excellence Award (Iowa State Univ.), TRW Outstanding Young Teacher Award (UCLA), CAREER Award (NSF), Association for Laboratory Automation Achievement Award (ALA), Samueli Outstanding Teacher Award (UCLA), Ho-Am Prize in Engineering (the Ho-Am Foundation), Robert Bosch Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems Award (IEEE), he has been involved with numerous professional activities, including General Chair of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on MEMS. An ASME Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and AIMBE Fellow, he is currently serving on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Journal of MEMS, on the Editorial Advisory Board for the IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, on the Editorial Board of Micro and Nano Systems Letters, as a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Functional Composites and Structures, on the International Steering Committee of Transducers, and on the International Steering Committee of Electrowetting Conference. A member of Council of Korean Americans (CKA), Prof. CJ Kim has also been active in the commercial sector as a consultant, advisor, and startup founder.

Young-Kee Kim

Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor, Chair of the Department of Physics, Senior Advisor of the Provost on Global Scientific Initiatives at the University of Chicago

Department of Physics, University of Chicago

Dr. Young-Kee Kim is Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics, Chair of the Department of Physics, and Senior Advisor to the Provost on Global Scientific Initiatives at the University of Chicago. As an experimental particle physicist, she has devoted to understanding the origin of mass for elementary particles by studying two of the most massive particles (W boson and top quark), and Higgs that gives mass to elementary particles. Between 2004 and 2006, she co-led Tevatron’s CDF experiment, a collaboration with 600 physicists from around the world. Between 2006 and 2013, she was Deputy Director of Fermilab. She is currently working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and accelerator physics. She was born in South Korea, and earned her BS and MS from Korea University, in 1984 and 1986, and her Ph.D. from University of Rochester in 1990. After postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, she became Professor of Physics at University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, she moved to the University of Chicago.

She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Sloan Foundation. She received the Ho-Am Prize, the Women in Science Leadership Award from the Chicago Council of Science and Technology, the University of Rochester’s Distinguished Scholar Medal, and Korea University’s Alumni Award. She will serve as President of the Korean American Scientists and Engineers Association in 2022-2023 and as President of the American Physical Society in 2024.

Yongho Sohn

CF Pegasus Professor and Lockheed Martin Professor of Engineering

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Central Florida

Dr. Yongho Sohn is a Pegasus Professor and Lockheed Martin Professor of Engineering in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at University of Central Florida (UCF). He received his B.S. with honors and M.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He graduated in 1999 with Ph.D. from Purdue University, and spent two years as a post-doctoral research scholar at the University of Connecticut. He joined UCF in 2001 as an assistant professor to pursue his research and teaching interests in metallic alloy powder processing and additive manufacturing, microstructural analysis and control, multicomponent diffusion in multiphase alloys, metallic/ceramic coatings for high temperature applications, and metal-matrix composites. He is an elected Fellow of ASM International (FASM), recipient of NSF CAREER Award (2003), Outstanding Materials Engineer Award from Purdue University (2016), KSEA Engineer of the Year Award (2020). He is an Editor-in-Chief for Diffusion Foundation (TransTech), Associate Editor for Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion (Springer), and a member editorial board for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions (Springer). As a faculty, he has supervised to completion, 15 Ph.D., 36 M.S., 9 post-docs, and many more undergraduate students with outstanding research outcomes for careers in academia, government and industry. Details on his research and teaching activities can be found at http://mse.ucf.edu/sohn.