Nam Sung Kim named 2016 IEEE Fellow

1/20/2016 Daniel Dexter, ECE ILLINOIS

Associate Professor Nam Sung Kim will join elite company when he becomes an IEEE Fellow as a part of the 2016 class.

Written by Daniel Dexter, ECE ILLINOIS

Associate Professor Nam Sung Kim will join elite company when he becomes an IEEE Fellow as a part of the 2016 class.

Nam Sung Kim
Nam Sung Kim
 Kim said it was a high honor for him to be named as an IEEE Fellow, particularly since he earned it as a young associate professor. Kim joined the ECE ILLINOIS faculty last fall. Prior to that, he was an early tenured professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and before that, a senior research scientist with Intel.

He earned a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a master and bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

He is the first IEEE Fellow among Korean researchers in his research field, computer architecture. He was nominated for his substantial contributions to advances in improving energy efficiency of microprocessors through interdisciplinary approaches spanning across innovative devices, circuits and architectures.

“I work on designing microprocessors that can be used in your laptop, cellphones, and data centers,” Kim said. “These days, the energy consumption is very important. We rely on this technology in our everyday lives, so improving their energy efficiency will make life easier. At the same time, it will have a huge beneficial impact on the environment and economy.”

He joined the ECE ILLINOIS last summer. Since coming to Illinois, Kim has enjoyed the atmosphere at ECE ILLINOIS because of the support he receives from the department and the high quality of students he has the pleasure to work with.

Kim considers his work to be interdisciplinary, and the environment at Illinois has allowed him to explore a wide variety topics that will affect people’s daily life in the coming years.

One of the biggest issues he’s been addressing is improving the computing power of healthcare wearable devices. As the industry approaches the physical limit on the size the devices can be, new methods need to be designed to optimize the computing efficiency.

“Currently, I am working on establishing a research center for IoT and wearable devices,” Kim said. “When I was a young boy, the computers were only available for a select few people. Now with these wearable devices and IoT, computing will be everywhere – every aspect of your life. This will result in interesting research challenges.”


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This story was published January 20, 2016.