Professor Sangook Park

Sangook Park was recently announced as Korea’s first Senior Secretary to the President for Science and Technology. Heading up secretaries in charge of R&D policy, digital technology, bio and medical sector and future strategic technologies; Sangook has the overall responsibility to adjust and coordinate various policies to pre-emptively identify areas of investment in critical technologies and R&D that will determine Korea’s competitiveness in the future.

Sangook Park is associate professor of science policy at the Department of Science Studies, Seoul National University. He is director of the Centre for Science, Technology and Future Research, also a founding coordinator of the SNU Innovation Lab, which is a research network for innovation and industrial policy in and around the SNU.

He holds a D.Phil in science and technology policy studies from SPRU, University of Sussex. He also has Ph.D. in chemistry from Seoul National University. His first doctoral research was about X-ray absorption spectroscopic analysis on electrocatalytic materials for hydrogen fuel cells, using a synchrotron light source.

During his years in chemistry, he organised an online-based NGO for young scientists and engineers, having carried out various activities to influence public policies. This experience had led Sangook Park, an experimental scientist, to turn into policy researcher. Before he joined SNU, he was assistant professor in public administration at Soongsil University. His research interest covers broad issues in science, technology and innovation policy, especially on the sociotechnical transition to sustainable future. Hydrogen energy has long been his topic of research, from applying the transformative approach to analysing an emerging industrial sector. He also published papers on official development assistance (ODA) and policy transfer across nations.

Sangook Park writes a column on STI policy regularly in a major Korean newspaper. He has participated in a number of government advisory committees, for instance, the Public Procurement Policy Committee and the R&D Innovation Cluster Board. He was an Expert Committeeman of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology of Korea.