Professor Jong-wan Choi of the Department of Chemical and Life Sciences at Sahmyook University received the ‘Emerging Academic Award’ at the 57th spring conference of The Rubber Society of Korea.

This award is given to researchers who have had a doctoral degree for less than ten years or are under 45, have contributed to rubber science development in Korea, and have excellent research activities.

Professor Choi received his Ph.D. in research on the synthesis of conductive polymers and applying optical properties. After being appointed as a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences at Sahmyook University in 2016, he has been researching the development and application of functional polymer composite materials.

The research results have been published as several papers and patents in internationally renowned academic journals such as △Scientific Reports △Optics Letters △Organic Electronics △Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry and were introduced at domestic and international academic conferences.

In addition, Professor Choi performed various tasks as a research director for the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Emerging Researcher Support project (3 years), Basic Research support project (3 years), and research services for private companies. Last year, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology won an order for the ‘Semiconductor Major Track Project’, a multi-agency collaboration project to nurture talents, and is training professional skills in the field of semiconductor materials.

Professor Choi said, “We are striving to develop the polymer industry by expanding our research fields to various fields such as energy, bio, and semiconductors as well as functional polymer composite materials, which are the existing research fields. We will continue to create synergies through convergence research with excellent researchers and derive remarkable research results that the world will note.”