Seokhyoung Kim Graduate Student Excellence S
eokhyoung Kim grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and entered Pohang University of Science and Technology, POSTECH, in 2005 for undergraduate studies in Chemistry. Shortly after his first year, he took a temporary leave to finish his mandatory military service in the Republic of Korea Army for two years, after which he started his undergraduate research in polymers. In the fall of 2010, Seokhyoung travelled to San Francisco, CA, to spend a year at the University of California at Berkeley as an undergraduate exchange student. There, he joined Professor Rachel Segalman’s group, and performed research on the de-
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eokhyoung took a gap year in 2013 to attend Ewha Womans University, one of the most prestigious universities in Korea, as a research associate. Here, under the guidance of Prof. Dong-Ha Kim, he switched his research focus to plasmon-enhanced dye-sensitized solar cells, and perovskite solar cells. After a year there, Seokhyoung received a significant scholarship from the Kwanjeong Foundation, which allowed him to return to America, to join to the Department of Chemistry at UNC and Professor Jim Cahoon’s research group.
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The Cahoon Research Group
velopment of ordered-heterojunction solar cell architectures, using rod-coil block copolymers. The time in the Segalman group was a tremendous experience, and the research experience at Berkeley inspired Seokhyoung to further pursue his independent research at the graduate level.
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fter graduating with his B.S. in Chemistry, 2012, having developed a deep interest for polymer science, Seokhyoung joined to the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. However, his love for soft polymeric materials did not last. Instead, Seokhyoung became very curious about hard semiconductor materials.
12 | CHEMISTRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
eokhyoung’s prior educational and research experiences in different schools and labs, helped him understand where his true research interests lay, and to find his postgraduate institution. He chose the Department of Chemistry at UNC due to its excellence in research, faculty, diversity, history, openness, and cooperative environment. Finding a home in the Cahoon group, Seokhyoung began his research in designing morphologies in epitaxial silicon nanowires and developing novel nanophotonic properties in nanowire superlattices.
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eokhyoung feels that Carolina Chemistry was the ideal home for his graduate research, and loves the quality of people − faculty, postdocs, staff and students − the excellent resources, and facilities, including Chapel Hill Analytical and Nanofabrication Laboratory, CHANL. The open culture here provides him with a learning environment where he feels supported in pursuing investigations into a variety of materials and analytical systems.
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