Cho Minhaeng


Cho Minhaeng is a South Korean scientist in researching physical chemistry, spectroscopy, and microscopy. He was director of the National Creative Research Initiative Center for Coherent Multidimensional Spectroscopy and is founding director of the Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics in the Institute for Basic Science, located in Korea University.

Education

Majoring in chemistry, Cho Minhaeng received both his B.S. and M.S. from Seoul National University in 1987 and 1989, respectively. He then studied in the University of Chicago where he majored in physical chemistry while at the same time was working there as a research assistant. Supervised by Professor Graham Fleming, he gained his Ph.D. in 1993.

Career

During the first year of his Ph.D. studies, Cho was a visiting scientist at the University of Rochester for several months. He repeated this at the Institute for Molecular Science in Japan in 1992 and at Brown University in 1993. He returned to IMS in 1993 as a visiting scientist and in 1997 as a visiting professor. After obtaining his Ph.D., Cho did a two-year postdoc under Professor Robert J. Silbey from 1994 to 1996 at MIT. He returned to Korea in 1996 as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, College of Science at Korea University. He became an associate professor in 1999, a full professor in 2003, and from 2005 to 2008 was the Hyundai-Kia Motor Professor.
In 2002, Cho was the chairman of the 1st International Conference on Multidimensional Vibrational Spectroscopy, held at Korea University. He was a member of the International Cooperation Committee, Korea Chemical Society from 2003 to 2006. He directed the National Creative Research Initiative Center for Coherent Multidimensional Spectroscopy from 2000 to 2009. He became director of the IBS Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, established in December 2014. In 2016, Choi Wonshik joined the Center as an associate director and head of the Super-depth Imaging Lab.
Cho's research group actively studies nonlinear optical and vibrational spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulations of chemical and biological systems in condensed phases, quantum dynamics of chemical reactions, linear and nonlinear chiroptical spectroscopy of biomolecules, quantum spectroscopy and imaging with high-precision laser technology, interferometric measurements of scattering fields for single particle tracking, chemically sensitive spectroscopy and imaging, surface-specific spectroscopy, and ultrafast vibrational microspectroscopy.

Membership