Badminton star An Se-young, Penn professor Kim Do-hyung named 7th Pony Chung Young Leader Award winners

The Pony Chung Foundation announced Wednesday that it has selected national badminton team player An Se-young and Kim Do-hyung, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, as recipients of the seventh Pony Chung Young Leader Award.

Foundation Chairman Chung Mong-gyu said An "is a trailblazing female talent who rose to the top of the world by overcoming relentless pressure and the hardships of injury," while Kim is "a next-generation scientist creating new principles for sustainable energy and chemical processes through research that decodes nanometer-scale interfaces where catalysts and liquids meet." He added that the foundation determined both recipients embody the Pony Chung spirit of challenge, innovation and social contribution. The award ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 25 at Pony Chung Hall in IPark Tower.

An has been called a "living legend" since being selected for the national team as a teenager, racking up a string of titles that include the youngest-ever winner of the French Open in 2019, a gold medal at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, world championship titles in 2023 and 2026, a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and a gold medal at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. She completed the women's singles "Grand Slam" by winning the Asian Badminton Championships in April.

Kim earned his bachelor's degree from Seoul National University's department of materials science and engineering in 2012 and his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 2018, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Since joining the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in 2022, he has led the Nano Electrochemistry and Interfaces Lab (KLEIN Lab), conducting research that maps atomic-scale reaction sites on solid catalyst surfaces to improve the efficiency of energy conversion and chemical manufacturing processes. He has accumulated roughly 15,000 paper citations and published in leading journals including Nature and Science. In October last year, he was selected for the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering, one of the most prestigious research support programs in the United States.

The Pony Chung Young Leader Award was established in 2020 as a second category of the Pony Chung Innovation Award, created to champion young innovators. Named in honor of the late Chung Se-young — honorary chairman of HDC Group (formerly Hyundai Development Company) and founder of Hyundai Motor Company, known as "Pony Chung" — the award recognizes two innovators aged 40 or under who have brought positive change to Korean society through a pioneering spirit. Each recipient receives a trophy and prize money of 50 million won ($37,200).

Last year's Young Leader Award recipients were Air Force Maj. Jeong Da-jeong, a pilot with more than 1,400 flight hours, and Kim Byung-hoon, chief executive of APR, the cosmetics company that became the top-ranked firm by market capitalization in its sector within roughly a decade of its founding.