Biographical Sketch of NAM PYO SUH
Dr. Nam Pyo Suh is the President of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He assumed this position on July 13, 2006, and was reappointed for another four-year term in 2010. He is also the Ralph E. & Eloise F. Cross Professor, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From the time of his inauguration, Dr. Suh’s goal for KAIST has been its elevation to the highest tier of the world’s science and technology universities. He has made a number of important changes in its governance, academic structure, curriculum, faculty tenure policy, and research structure. He has initiated major research and educational activities in energy, environment, water, and sustainability (EEWS), in addition to strengthening the university’s work in fields related to information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and complex systems. He has secured additional funding for the university from government and private sources. In 2007, KAIST received the highest award from the President of Korea for its contributions to the nation. In 2009, KAIST’s worldwide ranking from QS/London Times, which had been at around 200, jumped to 69th overall and 21st in engineering. At KAIST, Professor Suh invented the On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV), which was selected by Time magazine as one of its “50 Best Inventions of 2010,” as well as the Mobile Harbor (MH).
During his career at MIT, which began in 1970, he was the Ralph E. & Eloise F. Cross Professor, director of the Park Center for Complex Systems (formerly the Manufacturing Institute), and, from 1991 to 2001, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He was also the founding director of the MIT Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity (1977-1984), the founder and director of the MIT-Industry Polymer Processing Program (1973-1984), head of the Mechanics and Material Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department (1975-1977), and a member of the Engineering Council of MIT (1980-1984 and 1991-2001).
In October 1984, Professor Suh took a leave of absence from MIT to accept an appointment by President Ronald Reagan, confirmed by the U.S. Senate, to National Science Foundation, where he was in charge of engineering. While serving there, he created a new direction for the Engineering Directorate and introduced a new organizational program structure to strengthen U.S. engineering education and research and to help ensure that the United States would occupy a leadership position in engineering well into the 21st century. He returned to MIT in January 1988.
During Dr. Suh’s tenure as head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the department redefined the discipline of mechanical engineering to broaden its effectiveness for the 21st century. Mechanical engineering at MIT was
transformed from a more narrowly physics-based discipline into one embracing information technology, biology, and design science as well as physics. A new curriculum was established, and an endowment fund was created to support faculty publications and development of teaching materials. Oxford University Press publishes the resulting books as the MIT/Pappalardo Series of Mechanical Engineering Books. Also under Dr. Suh’s leadership in this period, endowed undergraduate laboratories (the Pappalardo Laboratories, the Der Torossian Computational Laboratory, the Cross CAD/CAM Laboratory, and the AMP Laboratory) were created, changing the quality of undergraduate education at MIT. Other new centers were put in place to strengthen research activities of the department; these included the d'Arbeloff Laboratories for Information Systems and Technology, the Laboratory for Bio-instrumentation System, the Rohsenow Heat and Mass Transfer Laboratory, the Laboratory for 21st Century Energy, the Hatsopoulos Microfluids Laboratory, and the Center for Innovation in Product Development. The number of endowed faculty chairs, the endowment, and the research volume of the department were all significantly increased as well, with the support of many generous donors. More than twenty outstanding young faculty members joined the department during these years, half of whom had degrees outside of the mechanical engineering field.
Dr. Suh has received seven honorary doctoral degrees: Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell in 1988, Doctor of Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1986, Honorary Doctor (Tekn. Hedersdoktor) from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, in 2000, Doctor of Engineering Honoris Causa, University of Queensland in 2007, Doctor Scientiarum Honoris Causa from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in 2007, Doctor of Science and Technology from Carnegie-Mellon University, in 2008, and Honoris Causa from Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2009. In 2011, the Technical University of Denmark awarded him its Gold Medal.
He is the recipient of the 2009 ASME Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Also from the ASME, he received the Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award, the Blackall Award, the Best Tribology Paper Award, and the William T. Ennor Manufacturing Technology Award. In 2010, the MIT Geospatial Data Center created the Professor Nam Suh Award for Innovation in Design of Software Systems. In 2011, the Society for Design and Process Science selected Dr. Suh for its 2011 transformative Achievement Medal and the Korea Economic Institute awarded him the Korean-American Achievement Award. In 2006, he received the General Pierre Nicolau Award, the highest honor given by the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP). In 2008, he was given the second Pony Chung Award of the Pony Chung Foundation, and the Inchon Education Award of the Inchon Memorial Foundation.
Among his many other professional honors are the F.W. Taylor Research Award of the Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Best Paper Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers; Federal Engineer of the Year Award from the National Society of Professional Engineers; the American Society for Engineering Education Centennial Medallion; and the National Science Foundation's Distinguished Service Award. He was awarded the KBS Korean Compatriot Award for Scholarly Achievements in 1994 and the Ho-Am Prize for Engineering in 1997. He received the Mensforth International Gold Medal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers of the United Kingdom in 2000 and the Hills Millennium Award from the Institution of Engineering Designers of the United Kingdom in 2001. In 2006, the Academy Gold Medal of Honor was awarded to him by the Academy of Transdisciplinary Learning and Advanced Studies (Society for Design and Process Science). In 2007, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society of Plastics Engineers. He was awarded the 2008 Proud Korean award for educational contributions by the Korea Association of Journalists and the Distinguished Alumni Award by Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Suh is listed in Who’s Who in the World, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in Science and Technology. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He is a member of Pi Tau Sigma, Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, ASEE, SPE, and AAAS. He is also a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, a fellow of International Academy for Production Engineering (Collége International pour l'Etude Scientifique des Techniques de Production Mécanique -- CIRP), a life fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, and a foreign member of the Korea National Academia of Engineering.
His research interests are broad. His current research projects are in the fields of design, manufacturing, tribology, and materials processing.
He is the author of over 300 papers, holds more than 80 patents. He has edited several books and is the author of seven: Elements of the Mechanical Behavior of Solids (with A.P.L. Turner, published by McGraw-Hill, 1975), Tribophysics (Prentice-Hall, 1986, translated into Chinese), The Principles of Design (Oxford University Press, 1990, translated into Japanese and Korean), The Delamination Theory of Wear (Elsevier, 1974), Axiomatic Design: Advances and Applications (Oxford University Press, 2001, also translated into Japanese and Chinese), Complexity: Theory and Applications (Oxford University Press, 2004), and Axiomatic Design and Fabrication of Composite Structures (with D. G. Lee, Oxford University Press, 2004).
His contributions to the field of tribology include the delamination theory of wear, the solution wear theory, a theory on the genesis of friction, coated cutting tools, the use of undulated surfaces to lower friction and wear, and new woven electrical connectors. His paper on delamination theory of wear was chosen as the citation classic by the Institute of Scientific Information. His invention of electric connectors that have low friction and low contact resistance (originally manufactured by Tribotek, Inc., now acquired by Methode Electronics, Inc.) received the Product of the Year award of Power Electronics Technology magazine in 2005. In the field of design, he has developed axiomatic design theory, which is taught worldwide and is required for certification of Master Black Belts by the American Society of Quality. He also advanced a theory of complexity and the concept of functional periodicity. In the field of polymer processing, he invented many industrially important processes and devices, including microcellular plastics (commercially known as MuCell, trademark of Trexel, Inc.), the USM foam molding process, the Axiometer for moisture measurement in polymers, the Electrostatic Charge Decay NDE technique (commercialized by QEA, Inc.), and the foam/straight plastic lamination/forming process (sold in billions of units by Sweetheart Plastics, Inc.). In metal processing, he is the inventor of a new metal processing technique called the Mixalloy Process. At KAIST, he invented the on-line electric vehicle (OLEV) and the Mobile Harbor (MH).
Professor Suh has taught axiomatic design, polymer processing, and tribology to many university professors and a large number of industrial engineers at major corporations all over the world. He taught axiomatic design at Ford, Mercedes Benz, Corning Glass, Alcoa, Saab, Tetrapak, Ericsson, ABB, Daewoo, SVG, General Motors, Telemecanique, Lockheed Martin, NASA, DoD, Delphi, and others. Many of these organizations have adopted axiomatic design principles in their work. MuCell technology has been licensed to many companies worldwide.
Professor Suh is a series editor for the Advanced Manufacturing Series and an editor of the MIT/Pappalardo Series in Mechanical Engineering of Oxford University Press. He was also the founding co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing from 1981 to 1996, and serves on editorial boards of many journals.
He is a member of the boards of directors of Integrated Device Technology, Inc., Axiomatic Design Software, Inc., and ParkerVision, Inc. He was a member of the board of directors of Silicon Valley Group, Inc. until its merger with ASM Lithography in 2001 and of Therma Wave, Inc. until it merged with KLM/Tencor. He was the founder and a member of the board of directors of Trexel, Inc. and Tribotek, Inc. (the technology is now acquired by Methode Electronics, Inc.)
He is a fellow of the University of Tokyo and a member of the International Advisory Board of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. He is an honorary professor at Yanbian University of Science and Technology, China, and the University of Hong Kong and advisory professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University, China. He has been on visiting committees of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of California - Berkeley. He was a member of the U.S. Department of Defense Panel on the Global War on Terrorism and served on a research award committee of the ASEE. He was a consultant of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Korea Electric Power Research Institute. He was a member of the Visiting Committee for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (a statutory committee). In addition, he was a member of the Development and Advisory Council of the Texas A&M University Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a member of the Science Board of MacroChem Corporation. He served on advisory committees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, and Alcan Aluminum Corporation. He was a member of several NRC and NAE committees. He was also the chairman of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Productivity Committee. He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the ENDREA Program of Sweden. He also evaluated a Kplus Center in Austria.
He has consulted extensively for governments, the World Bank, the United Nations, universities, and many industrial firms throughout the world on various technical matters, the development of economic policies, and the creation of new products and processes. He was the architect of the Five-Year (1980-85) Economic Development Plan of the Republic of Korea.
Professor Suh was educated at Buckingham, Browne and Nichols School (1955), MIT (S.B., 1959, and S.M., 1961) and Carnegie-Mellon University (Ph.D., 1964).
Prior to joining the MIT faculty, Professor Suh was with the University of South Carolina (1965-1969), USM Corporation (1961-1965), and Guild Plastics, Inc. (1958-1960, part-time). He is a fellow and was also a visiting professor at Tokyo University, Japan (1989) and Yonsei University, Korea (2001). He was the William Mong Distinguished Fellow at the University of Hong Kong (2002). While at Guild Plastics during his undergraduate years, he invented the foam/straight lamination/forming process, which became a major industrial process produced over tens of billions of plastic parts. At USM, he invented the high-pressure USM foam molding process. USM Corporation sponsored his doctoral study and research at Carnegie-Mellon University. Other industrial firms are using his other inventions.
Professor Nam P. Suh is married to Young J. Suh (née Surh). They have four daughters, four sons-in-law, and six grandchildren.
(May 2011)