In 1998, when the nation was suffering from an economic disaster, a young scholar who had completed his research in the United States returned as a college professor. Far from the analysis tools utilized in the U.S., the authorities reduce R&D prices, so it couldn’t discover a respectable R&D challenge. It was the starting that I barely participated in the group research by asking a senior professor. Twenty-eight years later, in 2026, he turned the finest scientist in Korea.
Chun Jin-woo, a particular underwood professor at Yonsei University (head of the Nanomedical Research Group at the Institute of Basic Science), was chosen as the winner of the 2026 Korea’s Best Science and Technology Award. It is the most prestigious science and expertise award in Korea, which has been awarded since 2003. In 1998, Professor Chun mentioned to himself, “Don’t doubt it. I want to say, “Be courageous and push forward.”
Professor Chun is one in all the first-generation scientists who began nanoscience analysis in Korea. In the early Nineteen Nineties, he studied nanoscience in the United States and devoted his 30 years to a discipline that the world had not but paid consideration to. It is evaluated that it has pioneered the discipline of nanomedicine by converging nanoscience and drugs and has improved the limitations of present drugs in illness analysis and cell remedy.
The motive for pioneering nanomedicine was a phrase of reward from a overseas scholar. When he synthesized complicated nanoparticles and introduced them exterior of faculty in 2001, an American scientist mentioned, “I also made it difficult, but I didn’t know that I would achieve this much in Korea.” It was a praise for the analysis outcomes, however Professor Chun didn’t chuckle. “If you continue in this field, you will only be in second place.” Professor Chun then neatly folded the research. It was to change into the ‘world’s solely scientist’ somewhat than a ‘reasonably excellent’ researcher.
Nanomedicine, led by Professor Chun, is altering the international medical paradigm. His “magnetic genetics” expertise succeeded in exactly controlling cells or mind nerves with magnetic fields and launched a new paradigm of mind and pc interface (BCI) expertise. Neuralink inserts a chip into the mind and reads the mind as an electrical sign. On the different hand, Professor Chun proposed a technique of studying mind alerts wirelessly by injecting solely a small quantity of liquid into the mind. It is a expertise that’s small in burden and has nice versatility.
Professor Chun emphasised, “You need to be able to continue your research without being shaken by the surrounding environment only when you are properly centered on yourself,” including, “We need a center to endure the time and effort needed to solve the problem.”
This can be the secret of Professor Chun’s rise to the prime scientist in Korea. “At first, I didn’t have money or research equipment, but the problem I wanted to solve was clear, so I was able to find another way,” he mentioned. “When artificial intelligence (AI) is in vogue these days, there are many researchers who adjust their research field to the trend, and it is the way for researchers to succeed in the long run to focus on their field without being shaken,” he mentioned.
[Reporter Choi Wonseok]