Kwon, Young-Se (In Memoriam)

Professor Kwon, Young-Se received B.S. from Seoul National University and Ph.D. degree in 1977 from the University of California, Berkeley. He continued his study on liquid crystal at the Army Research Office in the United States. Since 1979, he had become a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at KAIST and had dedicated his entire life for education and development of technologies in the area of compound semiconductors, optoelectronics and high speed devices in Korea.
In the late '70s, he started Optoelectronics laboratory in KAIST for the first time in Korea and started pioneering researches on compound semiconductors. He developed the first LED and LD in Korea and was proud of keeping the first current-voltage data of the first LD in Korea. Since then, he had educated many outstanding graduate students in his Optoelectronics laboratory. Many of his ex-students contributed to the blossom of current semiconductor industries in Korea. These included not only LED and OLED display industries but also silicon based DRAM ones.
In the late 90s, he received the ERC(engineering research center) from NRF(national research foundation) in the area of optoelectronics and devoted to interdisciplinary R&Ds and training students in the area of optoelectronics. As a result, many professors and researchers in the field of compound semiconductors and optoelectronics in Korea were from his optoelectronics laboratory. A lot of companies related to compound semiconductors, optoelectronics, high speed electronics and packages were also founded by people from his laboratory. He had played a crucial role in raising the related industries to world class levels. Finally, he founded WAVENIX Co., Ltd. in 2004 in order to convey the spirit of entrepreneurship to students and also made a great contribution to the company growth.
Professor Kwon Young-Se had been a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology for 30 years and had contributed greatly to the growth of semiconductor and optoelectronics industries in Korea by educating many students and publishing many excellent papers. Especially, he had also played an important role in enhancing communications between professors and laboratories while he was serving as the dean of information and electronics engineering school in KAIST.

BY (Songcheol Hong)