Professor Hwang Cheol-sung, a chair professor at Seoul National University, has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Korea's Top Scientist and Engineer Award. Professor Hwang is recognized for elevating Korea's semiconductor technology competitiveness to a global level through research on next-generation semiconductor devices.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Federation of Science and Technology Societies announced on the 3rd that Professor Hwang has been selected as this year's recipient of the Korea's Top Scientist and Engineer Award.
This award has been presented since 2003 to discover scientists and engineers who have achieved research results representing Korea. The recipient will receive a presidential citation and a prize of 300 million won. Professor Hwang is the 48th recipient in history, and this year's award ceremony is set to be held on the 9th during the opening ceremony of the '2025 World Korean Scientists and Engineers Conference' at the Korea Science and Technology Center in Gangnam, Seoul.
Having completed his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University, Professor Hwang worked as a senior researcher at Samsung Electronics' Semiconductor Research Institute before moving to his alma mater as a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering since 1998.
Among Professor Hwang's research, the most widely recognized is his analysis of thin wires (nano filaments) structured from platinum/titanium dioxide/platinum, which elucidated the operating principle of resistive switching memory devices. Resistive switching memory is next-generation memory technology that utilizes differences in resistance to store information and is characterized by high energy efficiency. Professor Hwang was the first to confirm that the phenomenon of resistance changing in this memory occurs due to the formation and disappearance of a specific type of titanium oxide.
Since its publication in the international journal 'Nature Nanotechnology' in 2010, this research has been cited over 2,450 times, ranking it among the top five most-cited papers in the field of resistive switching memory semiconductors.
In addition, Professor Hwang has published 750 papers in SCI journals and holds 227 patents (142 applications, 85 registrations) and 16 technology transfers, making significant contributions to the development of the semiconductor industry through ongoing collaborations between academia and industry. He has also contributed to training specialized personnel in the next-generation semiconductor field by mentoring 65 master's students and 100 doctoral students.
Professor Hwang said during a meeting with reporters, "Rather than an award given to an individual, I believe this reflects the importance of the semiconductor field. I am grateful."
For his future research plans, Professor Hwang pointed to 'neuromorphic semiconductors' that operate like the human brain. He noted, "While machine intelligence like ChatGPT operates based on massive amounts of data, the human brain thinks in a completely different and efficient way," emphasizing that to become a leading nation in artificial intelligence (AI), Korea would need at least 1,000 data centers, which would consume a lot of power, and by developing neuromorphic devices, resource consumption could be reduced.
With four years until retirement, Professor Hwang mentioned, "I had personal dreams, such as painting or audio production, but if I conduct more research, I think I need to focus on research that is currently necessary rather than what I want to do. I want to work on training personnel and establishing research foundations for future generations so that Korea's memory semiconductors can be even slightly ahead of China."