1) What he had done before XJTLU

Prof. Heechae Choi (hereinafter Heechae) joined the Chemistry Department of XJTLU as a professor in January 2023 after spending years at University of Cologne, Germany, where he started his independent academic career with a prestigious fellowship, MOPGA-GRI (Sep.2018 - Dec.2022). Before his first independent research launched in Germany, he founded two venture companies, Virtual Lab Inc. and Materials Lab (Mar.2016, Aug.2018), which provide materials simulation platform and consulting services to big manufacturing companies including Samsung Electronics, 3M, SK, MiCo.

2) His research outputs in academia and industry

He has developed several theory models for quality controls of mass produced functional materials running his technology-based business and doing academic work in parallel.Heechae has published more than 120 peer-reviewed papers (as of September 2024) so far, and the h-index is 30, according to the Google Scholar statistics.

The projects that he conducted as the PI are mostly about the theory-based materials processing condition predictions for high-technology business such as
- Apples iPhone antenna materials

- Samsung Electronicss capacitor lifetime

- Reliance-Samsung network device

- Electrostatic chuck

- Samsungs ceramic heater

- Artificial diamond fabrications using Thermodynamics

3) Current research interests at XJTLU

Heechae's current main research interests are

- Fundamental approaches to energy conversion materials,

- Quantum computing materials

- Surface reaction theory model development for semiconductor processing

- Transport theory development for nanodevices and complex nanomaterials

- Theory development for "Thermodynamics of photochemistry"

1) Semiconductor Processing

2) Multi-scale simulations

3) Photochemistry

4) Fundamentals of Catalytic Reactions with considerations of Electromagnetism and Fluid Dynamics

5) Simulation Platform for Manufacturing of Functional Materials

Professor - Department of Chemistry, XJTLU - Jan.2023 to Present

Visiting Professor - Dept. of Chemistry, University of Cologne - Jan. 2023 to Present

Group Leader (Principal Investigator) - University of Cologne - Sep.2018 to Dec. 2022

Adjunct Professor - Dept. Metallurgical and Materials Eng., IIT-Madras - Apr. 2022 to Dec. 2022

CEO, Founder - Materials Lab, Aug. 2018 to Present

CSO - MOP Materials - Aug. 2021 to Present

CSO, Co-founder - Virtual Lab Inc. - Mar.2016 to June 2018

Postdoc - Korea Institute of Science Technology (KIST) - Mar. 2012 to Feb. 2016

Physical Chemistry (CHE 202)

Further Key Skills in Chemistry (CHE203) - Math part, co-teaching

- Top 40 in the whole country (South Korea) KRCF grant for young scientists - May 2012 
*Similar with China's Young Thousand Talent (YTT) Program*

- #1 Excellence PhD Thesis Award, Engineering School of Hanyang University (Among 140 PhD receipients) - Feb. 2012

- Top 10 Excellence Thesis of Graduate School, Hanyang University (Among 900) - Feb. 2012