The honor underscores a stellar career that includes groundbreaking research and impressive contributions to education and leadership.
MSE and Macro is pleased to announce that Jinsang Kim has earned the title Raoul Kopelman Collegiate Professor of Science and Engineering, effective March 1.
“Professor Kim has made exceptional contributions in soft materials research, education, and service. He combines outstanding scholarship with scientific and institutional leadership, and he is recognized as a great teacher, too. He continues the tradition of excellence epitomized by Raoul Kopelman. Our heartiest congratulations for this well-deserved honor.”
An expert in a broad range of areas, including plastic electronics, self-signal amplifying molecular biosensors, highly emissive organic emitters, high-performance polymers, and bioinspired soft materials, Kim holds a B.S and M.S. from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. from MIT.
Since joining University of Michigan in 2003, Professor Kim has consecutively published groundbreaking papers that have been highlighted in major news media and journals. Impressively, the impact of his pioneering works is not just on a single research area, but also on broad optoelectronic polymer and organic research fields. Through rational molecular design and elaborated chemical synthesis and device fabrication, he established various molecular design principles of novel functional organic and polymeric systems for smart sensors, displays, and plastic electronics.
Professor Kim’s research group opened up new research in the field of metal-free organic phosphors designed for bright triplet room temperature emission and color tuning capability for devices and sensors. The seminal paper reporting the first rational molecular design principle of such novel organic phosphorescence materials has been highlighted by many news media and cited near 1,500 times and has inspired many follow-up papers from other research groups worldwide. He has also significantly contributed to the design principles of functional polymers and conjugated polymers for optoelectronics. He devised a complete molecular design rule to make conducting polymer thin films with directed self-assembly and alignment, a knotty task in the research community, and demonstrated high performance plastic transistor. More recently, he revealed a breakthrough idea to achieve high thermal conductivity in amorphous polymer thin films by controlling polymer conformation through a polymer blend system design. These developments opened new polymer design strategies to facilitate charge carrier and phonon transport through polymers and have been widely highlighted due to the practical value and the impact on plastic electronics. Another high impact research development Professor Kim has made is in organic and polymeric sensory materials. The devised convenient colorimetric molecular sensors have been established as a universal sensory platform for the detection of various biomolecules and chemicals, such as the influenza virus, DNA, miRNA, antigens, bacteria, metal ions, antibiotics, and pathogens.
Professor Kim’s 160 publications have been cited more than 13,000 times. His research developments have significant practical value in real applications as much as the scientific importance. He has 12 awarded and three pending patents, as well as a couple of license agreements to commercialize the technologies. His contribution to education is outstanding as well. He has supervised 29 Ph.D. students, 17 post-doctoral fellows, and 21 M.S. students. His impact on the chemical science and engineering research community is truly remarkable. Over 40 Ph.D.-level researchers from his research group have emerged as prominent leaders in academia, national laboratories, and major industries. In addition to his research and educational contributions, he has played a leadership role by serving as the director of Macromolecular Science and Engineering from 2018-2024.
Among his several awards, Kim has received the Monroe-Brown Foundation Research Excellence Award, an NSF CAREER Award, the Jon R. and Beverly S. Holt Award for Excellence in Teaching, the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemist, and the ACS ICI Award.
Kim’s professorship namesake, Raoul Kopelman, the Richard Smalley Distinguished University Professor, was an expert in photonics, laser and bioanalytical chemistry, chemical physics, nanomaterials, and nanodevices. Kopelman received his B.S. and engineering diploma and his M.S. in physical chemistry from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He was the first Israeli to receive the U.S. Fulbright Travel Grant in 1957. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University in 1960 and completed post-doctoral training at Harvard University. Professor Kopelman joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1966.
During his incredible 57-year tenure at U-M, Kopelman was celebrated for his leadership, research, and educator role in the materials nanoscience community, for key developments in percolation theory applications and fractal kinetics, and for developing nanochemistry and nanobiochemistry scientific paradigms and tools, integrating these into nanomedicine to treat life-threatening diseases.
“Raoul Kopelman was an inspiring role model who was active in research even at the age of 89 and mentored more than 70 Ph.D. students,” said Kim. “Amazingly, four of his students received a Nobel Prize. He was a humble, approachable, and caring mentor for everyone. He worked on Engineering aspects as well as Science, having appointments in both LSA and CoE, very much the same as I have been. It is my extreme honor to carry on his extraordinary legacy.”
An official installment ceremony to honor Kim will be held on September 24 in the Johnson Rooms.