Professor Hyang-Sook Lee Won Seoul City Culture Award in the Academic Section
- Date2023.10.27
- 6956
Professor Hyang-Sook Lee at the Mathematics Department received the 72nd Seoul City Culture Award in the Academic Section on October 20th (Fri) at the Seoul City Hall.
Seoul City Culture Award, established in 1948, has a long history and tradition and recognizes those who significantly contributed to the cultural development and culture and arts promotion of Seoul. The recipient of this award is selected after a preliminary evaluation and a final evaluation: The seventy members of the Preliminary Evaluation Committee shortlist the candidates in the preliminary evaluation process; the Final Official Evaluation Committee – a group of sixteen members, including field experts and Seoul City Council members – selects the winner among the shortlisted candidates.
Professor Lee was selected as the winner in recognition of her contribution to enhancing the status of women in science as the first female president of the Korean Mathematical Society (KMS), expanding the industrial applications of mathematics, and her academic achievement of researching and developing public-key cryptography that stimulated the cryptographic academia at home and abroad and significantly influenced the following studies.
Professor Lee’s research on efficient implementation of pairing in pairing-based cryptography made a significant impact in academia and the industry, influencing the following studies to a great degree and making South Korea a leading country in this field. She has recently extended her research area into lattice-based cryptography and homomorphic encryption. Lattice is a cryptographic primitive of post-quantum cryptography that is essential in the age of quantum technology.
She worked hard as the first female president in the seventy-year-long history of the KMS for the goal of making mathematics fun and accessible to the public, such as Math Culture Ambassador projects and 365-day Math Content Project, along with other activities for facilitating STEM academia. She helped expand the industrial applications of mathematics, which are used in developing technologies for the age of the fourth industrialization, such as AI, big data, and IoT, by helping to propose a facilitation scheme for industrial mathematics. She was also the senior vice chair of the Organizing Committee and the chair of the Public and Media Relations Committee at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) 2014. In an effort to promote and spread the math culture, she hosted various cultural events on math, advertised the ICM on the internet and various media outlets, and raised the awareness about ICM among youth and general citizens.