MinJun Kim of Lyle College of Engineering, Southern Methodist University

Research Highlights of BASTlabs: https://youtu.be/JvfaZx-aqwM

Research Website: http://bastlabs.org/

MinJun Kim, Ph.D.

Robert C. Womack Endowed Chair Professor in Engineering

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Southern Methodist University

PO Box 750337, Dallas, TX 75275-0337

Biography:

Professor, Robert C. Womack Chair in Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Southern Methodist University

Dr. MinJun Kim is presently the Robert C. Womack Endowed Chair Professor of Engineering at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Southern Methodist University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Yonsei University in Korea and Texas A&M University, respectively. Dr. Kim completed his Ph.D. degree in Engineering at Brown University, where he held the prestigious Simon Ostrach Fellowship. Following his graduate studies, Dr. Kim was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Rowland Institute in Harvard University. He joined Drexel University in 2006 as Assistant Professor and was later promoted to Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics. Dr. Kim has been exploring biological transport phenomena including cellular/molecular mechanics and engineering in novel nano/microscale architectures to produce new types of nanobiotechology, such as nanopore technology and nano/micro robotics. His notable awards include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2008), Drexel Career Development Award (2008), Human Frontier Science Program Young Investigator Award (2009), Army Research Office Young Investigator Award (2010), Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2011), KOFST Brain Pool Fellowship (2013 & 2015), Bionic Engineering Outstanding Contribution Award (2013), Louis & Bessie Stein Fellowship (2008 & 2014), ISBE Fellow (2014), ASME Fellow (2014), Top10 Netexplo Award (2016), KSEA & KOFST Engineer of the Year Award (2016), IEEE Senior Member (2017), and Sam Taylor Fellowship (2018).

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Research

Ongoing research program can be broadly categorized into three core subject areas: micro/nanorobotics, single cell/single molecule biophysics, and transport phenomena. Although each core program consists of a distinct project, we would like to emphasize their synergistic nature – advances in one core are expected to drive the development of the others. The unifying component of all the cores is “biologically inspired nano/micro engineering.” Rapid advances in science and engineering over the past 20 years have enabled us to manipulate matter down to the atomic level. With this unprecedented level of control over matter extraordinary new technologies are being developed with applications spanning a diverse array of fields ranging from biology to robotics. Today there exist a diversity range of nano/microfabrication techniques that are capable of producing small scale functional materials and devices. These new stimuli responsive devices open up the possibility to probe biology on the length scales where fundamental biological processes take place, such as epigenetic and genetic control of single cells. Currently our lab is actively researching four broad topics revolving around small scale engineering: Microbiorobotics for Manipulation and Sensing, Synthetic Nanopore Fabrication and Single Molecule/Single Cell Analysis, Biologically Inspired Metamaterials for Nano/Optoelectronics, and Swimming and Flying at Low Reynold Number.

Address:Department of Mechanical Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States, 75275-0337