Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) announced that Dr. Jae Min Kwon, a principal researcher of KFE, was selected as “Employee of the Year”, an award presented annually to the person who makes the greatest dedication to the growth of the institute in 2022 and received the award at the kick-off meeting for the year held on Jan. 2, 2023.

Dr. Suk Jae Yoo (President of KFE) and Dr. Jae Min Kwon (2022 Employee of the Year awardee, principal researcher of KFE) 

Dr. Kwon serves as the Division Head of the Integrated Simulation Division in the Fusion Engineering Research Center, and he has been making significant contributions to simulations, theories, and modeling researches to understand the properties of nuclear fusion plasma.

In particular, his achievements such as the development of gyrokinetic turbulence simulation codes and various theoretical and simulation studies based on the codes were highly recognized for their contributions to enhancing the research capacity of Korea in the field of nuclear fusion software.

Furthermore, his leading role in the development of Virtual KSTAR was highly rated, which is an attempt to integrate nuclear fusion simulations with the digital twin technologies. Through the development, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), also known as Korea’s artificial sun, is being realized in digital virtual space.

Dr. Kwon is an expert on nuclear fusion who has been leading the research and development of nuclear fusion simulation technology. He majored in physics at KAIST, served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). After joining KFE, he has been working as a senior research staff (2008~2012), and a principal research staff (2012~now).