'National Scholar' Lee Ki-myeong, Deputy Director of the Institute for Basic Science, Moves to Chinese Research Institute... 'String Theory' Expert

2006 National Scholar Selected Physicist
Research at China's BIMSA After Retirement

Lee Ki-myung (65), a physicist who was selected as a 'Star Faculty' in 2006, and currently the Vice President of the Institute for Advanced Study, will move to a research institution in China to continue his research after retiring from the Institute for Advanced Study this August.

▲Professor Lee Ki-myung

According to Yonhap News on the 22nd, Vice President Lee Ki-myung accepted an offer from the Beijing Yanqihu Institute of Applied Mathematics (BIMSA) and will conduct research activities as a professor in China for the next five years (initial 3 years + 2 years extension).

Vice President Lee has made significant research achievements in fields such as 'superstring theory,' which views the smallest units composing the universe as constantly vibrating strings to reveal the ultimate principles of the universe and nature, as well as quantum mechanics.

He was recognized for his research achievements, including having 2,735 citations in the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 2006, and was selected as a 'Star Faculty.' In 2014, he received the Republic of Korea's highest science and technology award.

In the field of superstring theory, he published several papers on major topics explaining quantum gravity theory for all gravitational phenomena, such as M2-branes and M5-branes, and is credited with raising the domestic research level in areas including 'supersymmetric Chern-Simons theory,' 'elementary angle theory' in 5 and 6 dimensions, and 'supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.'

Vice President Lee graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in physics, earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in the United States, and worked as an assistant and associate professor at the same university. After returning to Korea, he worked at Seoul National University's Department of Physics before moving to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1999, where he has been employed since.

BIMSA, where Professor Lee will work, was established in 2020 with joint support from Beijing City and Tsinghua University, and is headed by Professor Shing-Tung Yau, a Chinese-American mathematician and Fields Medalist.