KAIST Professor Han, Sunkyu Elected First Korean Member of the 'Organic Syntheses' Board of Editors

[Financial News] Professor Han, Sunkyu of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has been elected as a member of the Board of Editors for Organic Syntheses, an American organic chemistry journal that has accumulated standard synthesis methods trusted by organic chemists worldwide, becoming the first Korean chemist to do so.
According to KAIST on the 11th, Professor Han, Sunkyu of the Department of Chemistry was elected as a Member of the Board of Editors of Organic Syntheses at the general meeting of Organic Syntheses, Inc. held in Chicago, USA, on August 23 (local time). Professor Han will serve as a verification editor for the next five years, proposing, inviting, and selecting research for publication in the journal, as well as directly reproducing and verifying synthesis methods developed by other researchers in his own laboratory. His term may be extended for up to three additional years.
Founded in 1921, Organic Syntheses maintains a unique operating model unlike that of conventional academic journals, publishing organic chemistry synthesis methods presented in papers only after their reproducibility has been confirmed through direct, repeated experiments in the laboratories of verification editors. The current editor-in-chief is Rick Lane Danheiser, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at MIT. Because yields, selectivity, and purification processes are rigorously verified through actual experiments, the synthesis methods published in the journal are regarded as standard experimental guidelines trusted and used by organic chemists worldwide.
The editorial board, currently composed of 14 members including the editor-in-chief and deputy editor-in-chief, has generally included two scholars from Asia. Prominent chemists from Japan, China, and Hong Kong, including 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate Ryoji Noyori, have served as members, and Professor Han is the first Korean chemist to be elected as a verification editor. Professor Han was elected to succeed Pauline Chiu of the University of Hong Kong, whose term ends at the end of this year.
Of the approximately 3,100 papers published by Organic Syntheses since its founding, nine were written by organic chemists based in Korea, four of them by KAIST faculty members. With Professor Han's election, the KAIST Department of Chemistry will also be able to host the Organic Syntheses Distinguished Lecture Series during his tenure as a verification editor. Sponsored by the Organic Syntheses Foundation, the program invites world-renowned organic chemists to KAIST and is expected to expand opportunities for students and young researchers to interact with leading scholars from around the world.
Professor Han is a globally recognized researcher in the chemical synthesis of complex natural products. Since joining KAIST in 2014, he has successfully synthesized numerous alkaloid natural products with complex structures derived from the Korean medicinal plant known as the Japanese leaf privet. More recently, building on this synthetic chemistry research, he has developed molecular photoswitches that control the structure and function of molecules using light, and has expanded his research into developing anticancer drugs and treatments for degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease using synthetic natural-product derivatives. Since June 2025, he has also served as an Associate Editor of Organic Letters, another leading international journal in the field of organic chemistry.

[email protected] Yeon Ji-an Reporter