Sang-hyun Kim is Professor and Chair of the School of Mathematics at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS). His research centers on low-dimensional topology and geometric group theory. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2007 and held positions at MSRI (now SLMath), the University of Texas at Austin, Tufts University, KAIST, and Seoul National University before joining KIAS.

His honours include the Sang-San Prize for Young Mathematicians (2012), the SNU CNS Research Excellence Award (2017), and selection as Scientist and Engineer of the Month by Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (2020). He is committed to innovation in teaching, having received the KAIST Creative Teaching Grand Award (2013) and the SNU CNS Teaching Excellence Award (2015).

He is an active public speaker, with lectures at Hyundai Card’s Da Vinci Motel (2024), the Future Intelligence series hosted by the Chung Mong-koo Foundation and Chosun Ilbo (2022), and the Korean Mathematical Society (2022). In 2023 he received the Choi Seok-jeong Award from the Ministry of Science and ICT for his work in mathematical outreach. He currently collaborates with Google DeepMind on AI agents for mathematical research, contributing to the Aletheia agent and Erdős problem experiments.