The Institute for Basic Science (IBS) launched the Center for Advanced Reactions Dynamics, a new research center in the field of chemistry, on December 23rd (Thursday). KAIST Professor IHEE Hyotcherl (pictured below) was appointed as the director of the new research center. As a result, IBS now has 1 research institute (Korea Virus Research Institute) and 31 research centers in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, life science, earth science, and interdisciplinary fields.

The new director Ihee graduated from the Department of Chemistry at KAIST and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, USA. He has since studied at the California Academy of Sciences and the University of Chicago, USA, and has been a professor at KAIST since 2003. He served as group leader of the IBS Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions since 2012 and as Deputy Director since 2015, where he has been focusing on chemical reaction research.

Director Ihee pioneered the field of chemical and biological systems analysis through X-ray scattering and diffraction. Some of his representative achievements include studies that used X-rays to observe the real-time position and motion of atoms that form chemical bonds within molecules. This is a noteworthy achievement, as atoms move only at the level of angstroms (1/100 million cm) at timescales of a few femtoseconds, which renders them extremely difficult to capture in real-time.

The first study that successfully observed the process where the molecular bond is broken was published in Science in 2005. 10 years after that, in 2015, the publication in Nature reported a moment when a molecule is born via the formation of a new chemical bond. Last year, his group succeeded in observing the movement of atoms during the entire process of a chemical reaction from its start to the end (‘20, Nature).

Based on these achievements, Director Ihee received the Young Scientist Award ('06), Kim Myung-soo Academic Award ('15), and Gyeongam Academic Award ('16). Meanwhile, he has been exerting his leadership in academia by serving as editor of several prominent international scientific journals in the field of chemistry, including Accounts of Chemical Research, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and Structural Dynamics.

Director IHEE Hyotcherl said, “We are trying to develop new experiments and analytical methods that can help us better understand chemical and biological reactions.” He added, “By accomplishing this, it is expected that the mechanism behind chemical reactions will be identified with high precision and accuracy, which will dramatically improve our understanding of chemical reactions.”