Professor Ryong Ryoo of the KAIST Department of Chemistry was nominated as one of the laureates in the Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014.

Since 2002, Thomson Reuters has been predicting and announcing potential Nobel Prize laureates by analyzing data from Web of Science. Out of the 156 predicted laureates, 25 have actually won the prize. This is the first time a Korean researcher has been included in the list of citation laureates.

Of the three research subjects selected by the company, Professor Ryoo as well as Professors Charles T. Kresge and Galen D. Stucky were nominated for the design of functional mesoporous materials.

Professor Ryoo is known for pioneering research in functional meso/nanoporous carbon materials and zeolites. He received his Master’s and Ph.D. in physical chemistry but after returning to Korea he changed topics to inorganic chemistry.

In 2011, Professor Ryoo was named as one of the “Top 100 Chemists of the 2000-2010 Decade” by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) based on Thomson Reuters citation impact data. He received the Breck Award by the International Zeolite Association in 2010, the Top Scientist Award by the Korean government in 2005, and the Ho-Am Prize in Science by the Ho-Am Foundation in 2010. He was named National Honor Scientist by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in 2007, and Leading Scientist in a Research Front by the Thomson Scientific and Korea Science and Engineering Foundation in 2007.

His papers on functional mesoporous materials have been cited more than 19800 times,with three of his papers collecting more than 1000 citations each.

Professor Ryoo’s major research accomplishments include the synthesis of mesoporous carbons and the design of mesoporous zeolite catalysts. His research on functional porous materials is expected to advance the development of highly efficient, eco-friendly catalysts.

Professor Ryoo received his Ph.D. at the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. He is currently the director of the Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions at the Institute for Basic Science.

Unfortunatly, Professor Ryoo did not win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014, adding to the number of mispredictions made by Thomson Reuters.