The AONSA Prize 2019The Selection Committee (SC) for the AONSAPrize 2019 received multiple nominees by thenomination deadline (September 27, 2018) andintensively reviewed them for a few months. All ofthe nominees made significant contributions to thefield of neutron scattering in the Asia-Oceaniaregion and are highly qualified, reflecting thequality of neutron science in the Asia-OceaniaRegion. Finally the SC unanimously nominatedProfessor Mahn Won Kim as a recipient to the 21st
Executive Committee Meeting held in Sydney,
Australia on November 17, 2018 and the SC’s
nomination was officially approved. The recipient
will be awarded a certificate, a medal and monetary
prize (US$5,000) at the Prize Ceremony to be held
during the AOCNS-2019 (Nov. 18-22, 2019),
Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

interface, and for his devoted mentoring of young
scientists in the community of neutron science.”
Mahn Won Kim received Ph. D from Universityof California, Santa Barbara in 1975 and became aResearch Associate of University of Pittsburgh.
Then, he joined Exxon Research and Engineering
Co. as Senior Staff Physicist. At Exxon, he started
his neutron scattering science focused on softmatter and was best known for using SANS todetermine the phase transition and criticalphenomena in microemulsions. In 1995, Prof. Kim
returned to Korea as Professor at KAIST. Upon his
return, Prof. Kim became closely engaged withHANARO reactor facility (which began operationin 1995) providing scientific advice for its longterm direction. Then, Prof. Kim served as the first
President of Korean Neutron Beam Users
Association (2003-2010) which was formallyformed at the beginning of the HANARO Cold
Neutron Facility Project (2003-2010). During thisperiod, Prof. Kim played an exceptional leadingrole in formulating and supporting the project as themost influential and effective advocate for neutron
scattering science to Korean government throughhis roles as President of Korea Institute forAdvanced Study (KIAS) and President of KNBUA.
Moreover, KNBUA became well established as a
focal organization of neutron users in Korea
promoting numerous domestic and international
neutron scattering activities including neutron
workshops, schools, and annual Japan-Korea
neutron science meeting. At the same time, as aPhysics Professor at KAIST, he educated manystudents and postdocs over the last 20 years, andmany of his former students and postdocs are
currently active members of domestic andinternational neutron community.

Mahn Won Kim
Department of Physics
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Citation: “For his seminal contributions inbuilding Asia-Oceania Neutron Scattering
Association and the establishing of the neutron
scattering community and facility in Korea, for his
successful application of second harmonic
generation (SHG) to investigate the air/liquid2018 Newsletter from AONSAIn addition, Kim has been one of major leaders inbuilding the Asia-Oceania neutron scatteringcommunity. He chaired the Asia-Pacific Round
Table Meeting on Neutron Science which was the27first formal preparatory meeting for establishing
AONSA. And, he served as the first President ofAONSA (2008-2010) during which the foundationof AONSA and friendship among AONSA
colleagues were well established. Most recently, heserved as an honorary chair of the ICNS 2017,
which was the first ICNS held in Asia-Oceania
region since AONSA was formed, and his honorary
chairmanship contributed significantly to thesuccess of the conference.

generation (SHG) to investigate the air/liquidinterface. This technique has been widely applied
since their pioneering work by several groups
around the world and extended to other important
issues such as the functional dynamics of ionchannels in membranes.
For his seminal achievement in neutron science hereceived the following awards:
Fellow of The American Physical Society (1994),
PARAMINS best patent - Lubes, (Exxon Chemical,1996), Research Award of KAIST (2004), Best
Teacher Award (College of Natural Science ofKAIST, 2012)

Kim’s important and direct contribution to neutronscience is his pioneering experimental works on
soft matter. These works developed an idea of theunderlying curvature elasticity that describes thestate of microemulsions, which stimulated thesubsequent theoretical developments. Anothermajor breakthrough done by Kim is the firstsuccessful application of second harmonic2018 Newsletter from AONSA

Dongfeng Chen
Vice president of AONSA28