Director

Director CHO Minhaeng

Professor Cho is the director of the Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, established in Dec. 2014.
Director Cho received both his B.S. and M.S. from Seoul National University in 1987 and 1989 respectively before studying in the U.S. where he gained his Ph.D. in 1993 from the University of Chicago. He returned to Korea in 1996 as an Assistant Professor at the Korea University after a two-year post-doctoral research experience at MIT, Cambridge, USA. He was made a full Professor at Korea University in 2003 before his directorship with IBS in 2014.

Introduction

Developing novel time- and space-resolved spectroscopy and imaging techniques to extend their applications to chemically reactive and biologically important molecular systems

• - Studying time-resolved molecular spectroscopy
• - Exploring molecular dynamics and computational chemistry
• - Identifying the underlying principles of optical imaging and developing optical imaging technologies
• - Developing molecular imaging technologies and applying those technologies to observe the three-dimensional structure of biomolecules

Main research activities

IBS Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics (CMSD), located in the Seoul campus of Korea University, emphasizes developments of novel time- and space-resolved spectroscopy techniques and their applications to chemically reactive and biologically important systems.

CMSD uses ultrashort duration pulses of light to generate stroboscopic movies of the molecular motions that lead to the chemical, biological, and physical transformations of condensed matter. We use a broad range of radiation sources to measure the dynamics of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom in a wide range of systems, perform quantum chemical and molecular mechanical computations of dynamic systems in condensed phases, and develop novel linear and nonlinear optical imaging and microscopy technologies to monitor time-evolution of chemically and biologically reactive systems in real time.

Main research results

• Ultrafast intraband Auger process in selfdoped colloidal quantum dots (Matter)
• Two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy of bacteriochlorophyll a with synchronized dual mode-locked lasers (Nature Communications)
• Graph Theory and Ion and Molecular Aggregation in Aqueous Solutions (Annual Review of Physical Chemistry)
• Fluorescence-Combined Interferometric Scattering Imaging Reveals Nanoscale Dynamic Events of Single Nascent Adhesions in Living Cells
  (J. Phys. Chem. Lett.)
• Deep optical imaging within complex scattering media (Nature Reviews | Physics)
• Cytoplasmic Protein Imaging with Mid-Infrared Photothermal Microscopy: Cellular Dynamics of Live Neurons and Oligodendrocytes (J. Phys. Chem. Lett.)