Hongkun Park
Professor of Chemistry and of Physics
Department of Chemistry and Chemical
Biology
Department of Physics
Harvard University
Associate Editor, Nano Letters
Conant 04812 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-496-0815
Fax: 617-384-7920
Email: hongkun_park at harvard.edu
2004.1 - Full Professor of Chemistry and of Physics, Harvard University
2003.7 - John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences, Harvard
University
2003.1 - Associate Professor of Chemistry, Harvard University
1999.9 - Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Harvard University
Nanometer-sized materials represent a natural size limit of the miniaturization trend of current technology, and they exhibit physical and chemical properties significantly different from their bulk counterparts. The research interest of Hongkun Park lies in developing detailed physical and chemical understanding of chemically derived nanostructures through new experimental methods and applying this knowledge to possible technological applications. Current research efforts toward these general goals are centered on two areas: (1) to study electronic, magnetic, and optical properties of individual molecules, clusters, nanowires, carbon nanotubes, and their arrays using combined transport, scanning probe and optical measurements and to develop detailed understanding of their behaviors, and (2) to develop synthesis methods for oxide and chalcogenide nanostructures that exhibit novel electronic and magnetic properties and to study the role of phase transitions in determining their properties at the individual nanostructure level.
Another research interest of Hongkun Park is to investigate spatiotemporal dynamics of neural networks by developing neuroelectronic interfaces. Neural networks, collections of neurons interconnected by synaptic junctions, form the physical basis of the central and peripheral nervous systems in biological organisms. These networks are responsible not only for the reaction of the organism to external stimuli but also for more highly organized cognitive functions such as memory, learning, and logic. Hongkun Park is interested in deciphering the inner workings of neural networks by coupling biological neural networks to nano- and microfabricated nanoelectrode and patch-clamp arrays and by probing real-time dynamics of neural connections using both electrical and optical interrogation. The research efforts should enable the detailed mapping of the action potential propagation and synaptic adaptation within the network, and therefore help answer crucial questions pertaining to biological neural networks.
Hongkun Park received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the College of Natural Sciences at Seoul National University, Korea, where he graduated summa cum laude and Valedictorian in 1990. Following a year of mandatory military service in the Republic of Korea Army, he proceeded to Stanford University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1996 under the direction of Richard N. Zare, with a thesis on photoionization dynamics of nitric oxide probed by angle- and energy-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. He joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University in 1999 after a three-year postdoctoral fellowship with Paul Alivisatos and Paul McEuen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research dealt with electron transport through individual nanocrystals and nanocrystal arrays. He received the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award and Research Corporation Research Innovation Award in 1999, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering in 2001, the NSF-CAREER Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2002, the Visiting Miller Research Professorship from the University of California at Berkeley, the Ho-Am Foundation Prize in Science, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2003, a World Technology Network Fellowship in 2004, and the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2008.