Chair Professors to Work toward the Nobel Prize The first batch of professors to fill the seats of the newly created Underwood Professor Chair positions have been appointed from among existing faculty members of Yonsei University. Recognized for their outstanding research achievements both inside and outside the country in their fields, the first Underwood Professors appointed are Professor Kim Dongho (Chemistry), Professor Lee Su Houng (Physics), Professor Kim Jung Han (Mathematics), and Professor Lee Hyun-chul (Internal Medicine, the School of Medicine). The Underwood Professorship was established to help the early attainment of the Yonsei Vision goals and to improve the “brand image” of both individual departments and the University itself. Unlike preexisting chair professorships, where notable scholars were invited from outside the university, the Underwood Professorship is offered to promising faculty members whose achievements are already globally recognized. The chair position accords them added recognition and benefits. Those selected as Underwood Professors will hold the title for three years (until 2010) and will be able to continue their studies in an environment (tangible and intangible) more conducive to research. During the appointment ceremony held on August 23, University President Jung Chang Young emphasized that “The Underwood Professor is the most honorable title throughout Yonsei. I commend the four professors, who have achieved great things thus far and who will undoubtedly represent Yonsei.” Professor Kim Dongho over 3,800 Citations in the field of Chemistry Thought to be the Yonseian closest to achieving a Nobel Prize, Professor Kim Dongho has published 220 SCI articles and has been cited 3,800 times. He is the foremost scientist in Korea and winner of many awards and honors, including the Scientist of the Month Award in 1999, the Sigma-Aldrich Award of the Korea Chemical Society in 2005, and the Korea Science Award in 2006, as well as election to National Scholar in 2006. For nine years since 1997, Professor Kim has held the position of Director of the National Creative Research Initiatives Program and is currently a full-member of the Korea Academy of Science and Technology. He is also leading the Chemistry department’s BK21 Project as head of the Nano-bio Molecular Aggregate Center. Professor Lee Su Houng Internationally Acknowledged for Research in Hadron Property Changes in Nuclear Matter Since his appointment as professor at Yonsei in 1990, Professor Lee Su Houng has been gathering international attention with his research on strong interactions in high temperatures and densities resulting in property changes. His 1992 article published in the Physical Review and titled “QCD sum rules for vector mesons in the nuclear medium” has been cited over 350 times internationally and is considered to have opened up a new field of research regarding property changes of hadrons in nuclear matter. Professor Lee was also named National Scholar in 2006 by the Korea Research Foundation and the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development for his research on exotic and heavy hadrons. Professor Kim Jeong Han The First Asian Recipient of the Fulkerson Prize In 1997, Professor Kim Jeong Han was awarded the Fulkerson Prize, the most prestigious award in combinatrics and network studies. He solved the problem involving the Ramsey theory (a theory that sufficiently large objects must necessarily contain a given structure), which had remained unsolved for 60 years. Professor Kim’s Fulkerson Prize is to this day the most prestigious international award a Korean mathematician has been awarded. His achievements have been noted of in an article in Science and are widely known in scientific circles worldwide. In 2006, Professor Kim became the first Korean to be invited as a plenary lecturer to the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), the Olympics of the mathematics world. Last month, Professor Kim was named by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Korea Science Foundation a scientist to serve as role model for young people. Professor Lee Hyun Chul Opening up a New Area of Diabetes Treatment Professor Lee Hyun Chul of the Division of Endocrinology, Department of Internal Medicine of the Medical School has conducted research to find a complete cure for diabetes for 20 years. In 2000, he developed a treatment for animal models where insulin gene therapy was used to cure diabetes and published his findings in Nature. Recently, Professor Lee has been working on discovering the genes that induce diabetes and developing new drugs to prevent and treat diabetes-related artery complications.