Professor Jeong Gwang-un (Department of Polymer -Nano Science &Technology, College of Engineering) received the Inox Academic Award at the 2024 Spring General Meeting and Conference of the Korean Society of Industrial Chemistry, held recently.

The Inox Academic Award, sponsored by Inox Co., Ltd., is presented to researchers who have achieved outstanding scholarly accomplishments in the field of industrial chemistry. Candidates are recommended to the selection committee if they have a productivity-and-impact index of 20 or higher and have published at least 15 first-author papers in journals ranked within the top 10% by citation in their field (JCR 10%) over the past five years; the committee then selects the recipient.

Professor Jeong has focused on interdisciplinary convergence research based on majors in polymer engineering and nanoengineering. To date he has published approximately 250 papers in top international SCI journals such as Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, ACS Nano, and JACS, and has registered over 50 domestic and international patents.

Recently, in the field of Liquid Crystal Networks (LCN) materials, he has been designing and synthesizing anisotropic liquid-crystalline monomers and precisely controlling molecular self-assembly across multiple length scales to maximize material properties. Liquid crystal network materials with controlled higher-order structures can be applied to high-performance semiconductor packaging, next-generation energy systems, and flexible display technologies.

He is also expanding his international research capacity through collaborations with international organizations such as the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Professor Jeong said, “I am deeply grateful to the president and members of the Korean Society of Industrial Chemistry for granting me the great honor of receiving the 8th Inox Academic Award, despite the many members who have produced excellent research achievements and contributed greatly to the society’s development. I also sincerely thank the graduate students and researchers of the Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Molecular Engineering Laboratory who conducted research with me amid many difficulties.”