Hongkun Park
Hongkun Park is Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He is also a Member of the Harvard Quantum Science and Engineering Graduate Program, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Harvard Center for Brain Science, and Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
Hongkun Park received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the College of Natural Sciences at Seoul National University, Korea, where he graduated summa cum laude and Valedictorian in 1990. Following two years of mandatory military service in the Republic of Korea Army, he proceeded to Stanford University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1996 under the direction of Richard N. Zare, with a thesis on photoionization dynamics of nitric oxide probed by angle- and energy-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. He joined the faculty at Harvard University in 1999 after a three-year postdoctoral fellowship with Paul Alivisatos and Paul McEuen at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
His current research group focuses on fundamental studies of nanoscale electrical, optical, and plasmonic devices that operate based upon quantum mechanical principles as well as the development of new nano- and microelectronic tools that can interface with living cells, cell networks, and organisms. The goal of his quantum optoelectronics effort is to develop solid-state optoelectronic devices that work all the way down to the single quantum level, thus paving the way for all-optical computing and solid-state quantum information processing. His nano-bio interfacing effort is geared toward developing new nanoscale tools for interrogating living cells and cell networks, with the focus in illuminating the inner workings of the brain. He is also
developing ultra-sensitive magnetic, electric, and temperature sensors based on diamond color centers and using them to address various problems spanning condensed matter physics, molecular structural determination, and biological sensing.
Awards and honors that Hongkun Park has received include Ho-Am Foundation Prize in Science, US Department of Defense Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, NIH Director's Pioneer Award, David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, The Scientist of the Year Award by KSEA, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Kavli Lectureship from the Delft University of Technology, A. R. Gordon Distinguished Lectureship at the University of Toronto, and William Draper Harkins Lectureship at the University of Chicago.