Professor Hyung-il Lee received his BS and MS degrees in Industrial Chemistry from Hanyang University in South Korea in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He received a PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Kris Matyjaszewski from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007-2009). He then joined the Department of Chemistry at Ulsan University in South Korea in 2009, and now he is an associate professor of chemistry. His current research interests are focused on the synthesis of stimuli-responsive polymers for sensing and bio-related applications.
Take a look at Professor Lee’s research group website
What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?
Actually, I never wanted to be a chemist who deals with a million tiny, stinky chemicals. I happened to major in chemistry just like other dreamless boys in college. However, after I knew that polymerization is a wonderful magic which turns useless gases to valuable materials for our life, I lived my life with the synthesis of polymers. I will guide my son to be a theoretical chemist though.
What was the motivation to write your Polymer Chemistry article?
Recently, a great deal of effort has been made to prepare polymers with multiple-responsive components. For example, the LCST of thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)s containing light responsive azobenzene groups in the side or end of the polymer chain was tuned by isomerization of the azobenzene moieties by photoirradiation. Several studies revealed that the biologically important green fluorescent protein (GFP) chromophore undergoes non-irradiative processes, such as E/Z isomerization, upon irradiation with light. With these as an inspiration, we turned to design dual responsive polymers in which thermoresponsive behaviors are further tuned by the E/Z isomerization of benzylidene oxazolone moieties by light irradiation.
Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
Since my work is related to polymer chemistry, which journal should I publish in except ‘Polymer Chemistry’?
In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
I might be attending the Spring 2015 ACS meeting.
How do you spend your spare time?
I spend it babysitting my 2 year old son and 9 month old daughter. If my wife lets me, I love to sleep.
Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
A professional GO (chess) player.
Read Professor Lee’s latest Polymer Chemistry paper:
New benzylidene oxazolone derived polymeric photoswitches for light-induced tunable thermoresponsive behaviors
A. Balamurugan and Hyung-il Lee
Cyrille Boyer is a guest web-writer for Polymer Chemistry. He is currently an associate professor and an ARC-Future Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales (Australia) and deputy director of the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine.
