In the last article, Prof. Kwon Se-jin (Aerospace Engineering at KAIST) introduced Prof. Joo Chul-min (School of Mechanical Engineering at Yonsei University) as a great communicator. In this article, Prof. Kwon introduces Prof. Chung Eui-heon (School of Mechatronics at GIST) as a scientist with endless curiosity and thirst for learning.

As academic disciplines become more specialized, each field of study becomes to have more and more sub-disciplines and becomes more professional. This is really true for science actually; for example, biology has specialized branches such as virus and stem cell. As a result, once a scientist chooses his/her major, it’s hard for the scientist to change his/her field and he/she becomes reluctant to do so. In this sense, Prof. Chung Eui-heon (aged 40) is unusual; he has changed his major three times and is a professor of School of Mechatronics at GIST now. Whenever he changes his major, he said, “I fear I could be a Jack of all trades, and master of none, as I have interests in lots of things outside my field. Even though I would fail in a new field, I think, that also could be a valuable asset as long as I like it, and therefore I will do my best where I am.”

Prof. Chung’s major is rocket combustion. He used to have a mind to major in physics but decided to get into aerospace engineering instead after “I heard that physics was only for geniuses.” After he achieved a master’s degree, he got an admission to MIT for a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering and he changed his major into biomedical engineering there. After he completed the undergraduate program for biology at MIT, he applied for and got admission to Havard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, a unique collaboration that integrates science, medicine and engineering.

Prof. Chung has absorbed knowledge which he isn’t good at but is interested in by questioning until he understands exactly what he wants to know.