Professor Char,Kookheon took office as dean of the College of Engineering.

-First dean from the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering of 24 years.

▲ Char, Kookheon, professor of Seoul National University, School of Chemical and Biological Engineering took office as the 28^th dean of the Seoul National University College of Engineering on September 1.

It is the first time in 24 years that a professor from the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering has become dean of the College of Engineering.

The College of Engineering started registering for the next dean candidate at the end of May, when Lee Kunwoo was serving as dean of the college and five candidates were registered. On June 15, 63 electoral college who was randomly selected among the 340 professors of the college participated in the vote, and the Professor Char, Kookheon was elected as the first dean candidate. According to the results of the vote, Professor Char was the first to be appointed by the president of the University. At the end of last August, Sung Nackin appointed Char as the dean of the College of Engineering.

The new dean Char Kookheon is known as the ‘experienced researcher' within the university. He is evaluated as a world-class scholar in the field of chemical engineering since he published more than 310 SCI papers and obtained over 90 patents.

Professor Char graduated from Seoul National University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. He holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering from KAIST and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. He worked in IBM Almaden Research Center in USA and LG Chemical before he became a professor in Seoul National University, and he has been teaching at Seoul National University for 26 years since 1991.

He is a member of the Gutenberg Foundation in Germany and a member of the American Physical Society. He was granted the TOTAL Visiting Scholar Award (France, 2017), the Samsung Polymer Award (Korea, 2012), the Gutenberg Research Award (Germany, 2006), and many other national and international academic awards.

He is also vice chairman of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea, a full member of the The Korean Academy of Science and serve as a committee member of The Presidential Committee on Balanced National Development. Within the University, He worked as a dean of the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering. As a vice dean of the Information Systems & Technology center of the College of EngineeringTechnology, he was in charge of computerization of all the materials of the college of Engineering.
Professor Char has pledged to set up a Task Force (TF) within the university in order to maintain the system for the military service exempted technical research personnel, which is in danger of abolition by the Ministry of National Defense due to the decrease in military resources.