Young Kuk, Visiting Professor

Young Kuk is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. Young Kuk is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. He is spending his sabbatical leave in the Electron Physics Group in the CNST from September, 2008 to August, 2009. Professor Kuk received his Ph.D. in Physics from Pennsylvania State University, and spent the following decade as a Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. In 1991 he became a Professor of Physics at Seoul National University. Professor Kuk is a Korean National Fellow, a recipient of the Korean National Academy of Science Award, the Erwin Mueller Young Scientist Award, and the American Vacuum Society Graduate Student Award. In October 2008, he received the Inchon "Academy" Prize, one of South Korea’s most prestigious awards for academic achievement. He has co-authored hundreds of journal articles and book chapters, and co-edited two books in the field of nanoscience. Professor Kuk’s research is focused on understanding physics at the nanometer scale as observed with scanning probe microscopy. He has been active in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) since its earliest development, contributing to its application for dynamic imaging of chemisorption, measuring carrier dynamics on semiconductor surfaces, and characterizing the structure and transport properties of nanowires. He has also studied the role of the tunneling tip in STM, local photovoltage with STM, nanomagnetism with spin polarized STM, and conformal transformation of molecules.