Six KU Professors Make the List of the World’s Most Influential Researchers in 2022
Professor Yongsik Ok of the Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering has become the world’s first academic to be listed in three research categories at the same time (Environment and Ecology, Engineering, and Biology and Biochemistry).
Professor Jongseung Kim has been listed in the category of Chemistry for nine consecutive years.
KU’s stature as a research-centered university has been reaffirmed as a result of its development of a healthy research ecosystem.


▲ ▲(From top left) Professor Jongseung Kim and Professor Hanyoung Woo of the Department of Chemistry; Professor Junhong Noh of the School of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering; (from bottom left) Professor Choonki Ahn of the School of Electrical Engineering; Professor Yongsik Ok of the Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering; and Professor Klaus-Robert Müller of the Department of Artificial Intelligence.

Six KU professors are among the world’s most influential researchers in 2022, based on the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list published by the global company Clarivate Analytics (formerly the division of intellectual property and science at Thomson Reuters).

The HCR list consists of the researchers whose papers have been most often cited. Clarivate identifies the top 1% of highly cited papers each year based on the 'Web of Science' database that the company operates, and includes the responsible researchers on that basis. Included in the HCR 2022 list, the ninth year it has been formulated, are those who have continuously been recognized by their peers worldwide based on the number of citations of their papers in the last twelve years.

According to Clarivate, a total of 6,938 researchers from 70 countries and regions are included in the global HCR list this year.

The KU faculty members who are on the list this year are Professor Jongseung Kim (Department of Chemistry), Professor Hanyoung Woo (Department of Chemistry); Professor Junhong Noh (School of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering); Professor Choonki Ahn (School of Electrical Engineering); Professor Yongsik Ok (Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering); and Professor Klaus-Robert Müller (Department of Artificial Intelligence), whose second institutional affiliation is KU. Professor Yongsik Ok was the first Korean to be included in the category of Environment and Ecology in 2019, and in the categories of both Environment and Ecology and Engineering in 2021. In an extraordinary achievement, this year Professor Ok has become the world’s first researcher to be included in the three categories of Environment and Ecology, Engineering, and Biology and Biochemistry. In another remarkable achievement, Professor Jongseung Kim has been included in the category of Chemistry for nine consecutive years since 2014. Professor Junhong Noh has been included in the category of Cross-Field for five consecutive years, and Professor Choonki Ahn in the category of Engineering for four. Professor Klaus-Robert Müller, whose second institutional affiliation is KU, has been included in the category of Cross-Field for four consecutive years, and Professor Yongsik Ok has been included in the same category for the first time this year.

Professor Jongseung Kim of the Department of Chemistry in the College of Science has developed small molecule-based next-generation targeted anticancer drugs. Professor Kim has published about 550 papers which have collectively been cited more than 40,000 times, and his h-index is 106. Also with 100 Korean and international patents he is a highly respected scholar who is play a leading role in his field. For 20 years, Professor Kim has devoted himself to the study of anticancer drug delivery systems that can effectively operate on only cancer cells, without incurring any side effects. The cancer cell apoptosis-inducing targeted anticancer therapy developed by Professor Kim is a low molecular weight compound that facilitates attacks only on cancer cells and significantly reduces the side effects of chemotherapy. Therefore, his anticancer therapy constitutes a new paradigm for overcoming drug resistance. Professor Kim is a regular member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, and he won the Inchon Award in 2017. He is an editor of many international journals, including Chemical Society Reviews (IF:60.6).

Professor Hanyoung Woo of the Department of Chemistry has developed π-conjugate organic molecule-based organic semiconductor and polymer semiconductor materials, and applied them to organic electronic devices such as organic solar cells, transistors, optical sensors, and thermoelectric devices. Professor Woo developed photoactive polymer materials by using non-covalent intramolecular interactions such as hydrogen bonds in order to improve the materials' crystallinity. These materials are drawing much attention worldwide, because they are capable of maximizing the energy conversion efficiency of the process by minimizing electron-proton recombination even in a thick film of about 300 nm. Due to this advantage, 1-Material and Brilliant Matters, which are reagent manufacturing companies based in Canada, have begun marketing them, and they are being utilized by world-class organic solar cell research groups in their study of roll-to-roll process development. Professor Woo has published about 300 SCI papers in the last 10 years in the field of organic electronic materials, and his h-index is 62. The total number of citations of his papers is over 15,000, indicating that he has long been committed to intensive R&D.

Professor Junhong Noh of the School of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering has worked in the field of next-generation solar cells in his quest to contribute to the field of renewable energy. Halide perovskite solar cell technology, which is his major research interest, is drawing much attention as an innovative departure which can contribute to the generation of renewable, non-carbon electric power. Professor Noh won the Korean Academy of Science and Technology's Young Scientist Award in 2019 (prize granted by the President of Korea), attracting attention as an expert in the field of next-generation solar cells. In particular, Professor Noh has significantly contributed to the improvement of the efficiency of perovskite solar cells and to the development of relevant source technologies. He has had excellent research accomplishments, in the process applying for and registering about 70 Korean and international patents, publishing approximately 110 SCI papers, and garnering in the region of 34,000 citations. In 2022 Professor Noh was also appointed head of the Energy Innovation Research Center, which is supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning and which is run under the aegis of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. In this role, he strives to foster world-class master's and doctoral researchers in the field of next-generation solar cells.

Professor Choonki Ahn of the School of Electrical Engineering in the College of Engineering is a leader in the field of research into intelligent control systems based on his powerful intuitions in the areas of control theory, neural networks, fuzzy theory and signal processing. He has published more than 300 papers in top-tier international journals (mostly in IEEE Transactions) in the last five years, making key breakthroughs in relation to several difficult problems in engineering. Professor Ahn was top-ranked in the field of electric and electronic engineering in the Qualitative Evaluation of Research by Young Professors in the University Evaluation of the JoongAng Daily in 2016. In 2017, he won the Korean Young Scientist Award (prize awarded by the President of Korea), as he had developed the world’s first multidimensional, intelligent robust control system. Professor Ahn has been a core editor at the world’s best journals in the field of intelligent and autonomous systems, including IEEE TNNLS, IEEE TFS, IEEE TSMCS, IEEE TASE, IEEE TITS, IEEE TCASI and IEEE SMCM. Recently, he became the first Asian Senior Editor of IEEE TNNLS (IF 14.255), which is the world’s top journal in the field of neural networks and AI, and the first Korean to win the ‘Outstanding Associate Editor Award’ at IEEE TSMCS (IF 11.471) and IEEE TNNLS (IF 14.255). In taking the lead internationally in the field of intelligent control systems, Professor Ahn is taking part in several collaborations among various international research groups, and is considered the world’s most-respected scholar in the field.

Professor Yongsik Ok of the Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering is one of the world’s most productive researchers in terms of the international collaborations he has been involved in, with 95% of his papers being based on such collaborations and 91.2% being published in top-10% journals in the field. More than half of the 678 papers he has published in the last 10 years have been identified as among the top 10% of cited papers. In the HCR 2022 list, 107 of his papers are identified as HCPs, making him the Korean scholar with the most such papers. As his research accomplishments and his influence are widely seen as playing an important role in solving the challenging problems of humankind, including plastic contamination and climate change, he has won globally prominent prizes. In 2019, he became the first Korean to be included in the HCR list in the category of Environment and Ecology. This year, he is included not only in this field but also in Engineering, as well as in Biology and Biochemistry. In addition, he is the first Asian to be appointed as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology (CREST, 5-year IF 13.2), which is one of the most authoritative international journals, published by Taylor & Francis. Professor Ok is also taking the lead in research related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiative.

Professor Klaus-Robert Müller of the Department of Artificial Intelligence in the Graduate School is a prominent world-class scholar who was invited to KU on the basis of his research on machine learning. He has been included in the HCP list in the category of Cross-Field since 2019. He has made extensive contributions to the major issues facing machine learning, including support vector machines, kernel methods, and neural networks. His current research interest is the application of time-series analysis and machine learning methodologies to biomedical data analysis (brain-computer interfaces, genome data analysis, medical data mining), atomic simulations and computational chemistry.

KU has been able to continuously enjoy several faculty members being on the HCR list for several years, primarily because of its excellent research environment and support systems, which facilitate the work of outstanding researchers. KU has made concerted efforts to create a healthy research ecosystem in which creativity and innovation can take root in a stable research environment through various support programs, including the Seoktap Outstanding Research Award, the Seoktap Outstanding Technology Award, the In-Sung Star Research Award and the In-Sung Star Research Fund. Against this background, the KU faculty members who are included in the HCR list this year have reaffirmed the stature of KU as a peerless research-centered university.