- Jeong H. Kim
Dr. Jeong H. Kim ( _ko. 김종훈) is a
Korean-American electrical engineer and administrator who, since 2005, has served as president ofBell Labs .Jeong Kim was born in
Seoul ,South Korea . He came to the U.S. from Korea with his father and stepmother at the age of 14. He began school inAnne Arundel County, Maryland with no knowledge of English. At sixteen, he left home and supported himself with odd jobs while he completed high school. He was accepted atJohns Hopkins University , where he completed his degrees in electrical engineering andcomputer science in three years while working for a start-up computer firm called Digitus, in which he eventually became a partner.Kim then enlisted in the
U.S. Navy , where he served as anuclear submarine officer for seven years. During this period he also obtained amaster's degree in Technical Management from Johns Hopkins. When he returned to civilian life, Kim worked forAlliedSignal at theNaval Research Laboratory , and again returned to school. After just two years of study, he received hisPh.D. in 1991 inreliability engineering , the first doctorate in that field awarded by the University of Maryland [http://www.eng.umd.edu/facilities/facilities_kim-building-intro.html University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering: Facilities: Kim Building ] ] .In 1992, Dr. Kim started his own firm, Yurie Systems, to promote his own ideas about streamlining electronic communications between different systems. There, he led the development of an
asynchronous transfer mode switch for wireless devices. The company was very successful, and, in 1998,Lucent paid over one billion dollars to acquire it. Kim stayed on with Lucent as a division president until 2001, when he returned to the University of Maryland as Professor of Practice in Reliability Engineering, with a joint appointment in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials and Nuclear Engineering [http://www.eng.umd.edu/ihof/kim.htm Innovation Hall of Fame, Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland ] ] .In March 2003 Dr. Kim led an investor group that purchased
Cibernet from theCellular Telecommunications & Internet Association . He assumed Cibernet's chairmanship intending "to introduce new technologies that [would] benefit wireless carriers around the world."http://www.venturehousegroup.com/cibernetpressrelease31803.pdf] . He left Cibernet in April, 2005, when he returned to Lucent to become President of their renownedBell Labs division.In 1998, The
Korea Society honored Dr. Kim with its annualJames A. Van Fleet Award for his contributions to closer U.S.—Korea relations. He has been inducted into theNational Academy of Engineering . The University of Maryland gave him its Innovation Hall of Fame award, and further honored him with the construction and naming of the Jeong H. Kim Engineering and Applied Sciences Building. In addition, Dr. Kim serves on the boards of many academic, corporate, and non-profit organizations, including theNASDAQ Listing and Hearing Review Councilhttp://www.lucent.com/corpinfo/bios/kim.html] .References
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