Ryong Ryoo is the director of the Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions at Institute for Basic Science, and a Distinguished Professor in the Chemistry Department at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He received his B.S. degree from Seoul National University in 1977, and M.S. from KAIST in 1979. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in the field of heterogeneous catalysis at Stanford University in 1986, with a thesis titled ‘Pt clusters supported on Y zeolite’, under the supervision of Prof. Michel Boudart. After a one-year postdoctoral experience on solid-state NMR in the Prof. Alex Pines group at University of California at Berkeley in 1986, he started his faculty careeras an assistant professor at KAIST. He carried out research on 129Xe NMR of zeolites and EXAFS of supported metal nanoparticles until 1993 at KAIST. He then extended his research areas to synthesis of mesoporous materials. He is well known for his pioneering work on ordered mesoporous carbons, CMK. He obtained the award ‘Leading Scientist in Research Front’ from Thomson Scientific in 2007 for his carbon study. Later, he pioneered research on tailored mesoporous materials in which the mesopore walls have a crystalline microporous zeolite structure. He has developed a synthesis route to such mesoporous materials, using various kinds of surfactants that are functionalized with a zeolite structure-directing agent. He received the Breck Award from the International Zeolite Association in 2010 for his work on MFI zeolite nanosheets. He was the third person to be bestowed with the ‘National Scientist’ title in Korea. He was listed among the Top 100 Chemists of the decade 2000-2010 by UNESCO & IUPAC, based on Thomson Reuters citation impact data. His work on tailored mesoporous zeolites was selected as one of the top 10 breakthroughs of 2011 by Science magazine. Later, he was placed on the list of Thomson Reuters’ predictions for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (jointly with Charles Kresge and Galen Stucky for Design of Functional Mesoporous Materials).

His current research interests lie in synthesis of nanostructured materials such as mesoporous materials, zeolitic materials, and metal nanoparticles, and their catalytic applications for future energy sources and green chemical technologies.