KAIST appoints its youngest ever professor

Prof. Han Soo-jean [KAIST]

Han Soo-jean has been named an engineering professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), becoming the university's youngest ever professor.

Born in 1999, the 24-year-old was appointed as an assistant professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at KAIST’s College of Engineering on Aug. 28, according to the university.

Han became the tech and science university’s youngest professor ever, breaking the previous record set by Choi Seo-hyeon, who had been appointed as a professor at KAIST’s mathematical science department at the age of 26 in 2009. Choi is no longer a faculty at KAIST.

Han entered the University of California, Berkley in 2014 after she received the qualification for high school graduation in Korea, and earned her bachelor’s degree in 2016.

Han enrolled in the master's and doctoral program at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2017 and received her doctoral degree in January this year. By the age of 19, the professor published her paper as a lead author in a Science Citation Index-ranked journal.

Before joining KAIST as an assistant professor, Han was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech.

Han’s studies are focused on autonomous control, AI and network decision-making, according to KAIST. Han currently teaches a course on learning patterns for autonomous control.

Headquartered in Daejeon, KAIST was founded in 1971 as the nation’s first university specializing in science and technology. The university is widely acknowledged as a top science and technology university in Korea.

However, Han is not the youngest professor to be appointed in Korea.

Alia Sabur, an American materials scientist raised in New York City, was appointed as a full-time lecturer in the Department of Advanced Technology Fusion at Konkuk University in Seoul in 2008, as a research liaison with Stony Brook University.

Born in 1989, Sabur was three days’ shy of turning 19 when she attained the position.

Sabur currently holds the official Guinness World Record title for the world’s youngest professor.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]