Taeghwan Hyeon: ‘Multidisciplinary collaboration is a must’

I grew up in the countryside near Taegu, which is the third largest city in Korea. My dad was a farmer, but he graduated high school, which is a high level of education in terms of in a countryside farm. When I was 11 years old, I represented my elementary school in the province science competition. The exam material was about acid–base titration. It seems like I did pretty well, and I received the silver medal. And then I thought, why don’t I become a scientist? So, I picked my career very early.

When you become an independent researcher, you don’t want to repeat or continue whatever you have done for your PhD. When I became a new professor in 1997, nanoscience was emerging, it was a completely new research area. I thought, ‘this is going to be a lot of fun, let me try this’. Actually, in the beginning it was not easy at all, because it was completely different from what I did in my PhD and postdoctoral research. But it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. That’s really what made me what I am now.

I’m really happy that our heat-up process has become almost the standard method to make uniform sized nanoparticles of different kinds of materials in large quantities. That’s my most important achievement. That’s why last year, I was selected as a Citation laureate, along with Moungi Bawendi and Chris Murray. The problem is, people only recognise me for my two papers about the heat-up process, not my many other papers about different topics. But I mean, I cannot complain.