Alumnus Moo Hwan Kim (PhDNE ’86) has been appointed as the eighth president of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), a private research university in Pohang, South Korea. He began his four-year term on Sept. 1, 2019.
Moo Hwan Kim. Photo: POSTECH.
Times Higher Education recently ranked POSTECH third on its 2019 list of the world’s best small universities. POSTECH was founded in 1986 as the first research-oriented university in Korea.
Born in Busan, South Korea, Kim received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering at Seoul National University in 1980 and 1982. He continued his studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his PhD in nuclear engineering in 1986 and then joined the POSTECH faculty in the following year.
Kim is an expert in the field of nuclear safety, and has held leadership positions in various departments at POSTECH, including vice president of student affairs, admissions, external relations and communications, and planning, and as a professor in the Division of Advanced Nuclear Engineering. He also served as the president of Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety from 2013 to 2016, a member of the International Nuclear Safety Group at the International Atomic Energy Agency from 2014 to 2018, and as a commissioner of the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission.