The Ministry of Science and ICT said on the 4th it will appoint Jang Seokbok, head of the IBS Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations and distinguished professor of chemistry at KAIST, as the fourth president of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS). The term is five years starting that day.
Jang, the new president, was born in 1962 in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province, and graduated from the Department of Chemistry at Korea University in 1985. Jang received a master's degree in chemistry from KAIST in 1987 and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in the United States in 1996.
Jang is a researcher in the field of catalytic reactions in organic chemistry and has published numerous research achievements in the field. Jang was named one of the "top 1% of researchers in the world," selected by the global scholarly analytics firm Clarivate, for eight consecutive years from 2015 to 2022, and also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), published by the American Chemical Society.
This is the first time that an internal IBS research center head has been selected as president. Since 2012, when IBS research centers were first launched, Jang has led the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said, "With this appointment, as a scholar with both academic authority and extensive field experience is selected, IBS is expected to leap forward as a world-leading research institution and contribute to the development of Korea's basic science research ecosystem."