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Dr. Young Kuk, a visiting researcher in NIST's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) is the latest recipient one of South Korea's most prestigious prizes for academic achievement.
Dr. Kuk received the Inchon "Academy" Prize in Seoul, South Korea on October 9, 2008. The Academy Prize is one of six the Inchon Foundation and the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper awards in different categories each year. The Inchon Prize honors the memory of Seong-Soo Kim, an early Korean newspaperman, academic, and co-founder of Korea University, who also served as the second Vice President of Korea. The name of the prize comes from Kim's use of "Inchon" as his pen name during Korea's early democratic struggles.
Dr. Kuk will be performing research at the CNST until August 2009 while on sabbatical from Seoul National University, where he was the Research Vice President and is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Kuk received his Ph.D. in Physics from Pennsylvania State University in 1981. From 1981 to 1991 he was a Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. In 1991 he became a Professor of Physics at Seoul National University. He is a Korean National Fellow, a recipient of the Korean National Academy of Science Award, the Erwin Mueller Young Scientist Award, and the American Vacuum Society Graduate Student Award. He has co-authored hundreds of journal articles and book chapters, and co-edited two books in the field of nanoscience.
Dr. Kuk's research is focused on understanding physics at the nanometer scale as observed with scanning probe microscopy. He has been active in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) since its earliest development, contributing to its application for dynamic imaging of chemisorption, measuring carrier dynamics on semiconductor surfaces, and characterizing the structure and transport properties of nanowires. Dr. Kuk has also studied the role of the tunneling tip in STM, local photovoltage with STM, nanomagnetism with spin polarized STM, and conformal transformation of molecules.