Jeong H. Kim

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Jeong Kim at the 2009 World Economic Forum

Dr. Jeong H. Kim (Korean: 김종훈) (born 1960) is a Korean-American technology entrepreneur. His background ranges from being a CEO of a high technology start up to senior executive of a Fortune 500 corporation and served as the President of Bell Labs from 2005 to 2013.

Jeong Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea. He came to the U.S. in 1975 at the age of 14. Speaking little English, he found the transition to a foreign culture difficult. He was lucky enough to find teachers who recognized his ambition and appetite for work, and took a personal interest in him. They planted the seeds of a lifelong commitment to education and a passion for technology. He attended Johns Hopkins University, where in three years he completed his degrees in electrical engineering and computer science while working for a technology company in which he became a partner.

Kim then joined the U.S. Navy, where he served as a nuclear submarine officer for seven years. During this period he also obtained a master's degree in Technical Management from Johns Hopkins. When he returned to civilian life, Kim worked for AlliedSignal at the Naval Research Laboratory, and again returned to school. After just two years of study, he received his Ph.D. in 1991 in reliability engineering, the first doctorate in that field awarded by the University of Maryland.

In 1992, Dr. Kim launched Yurie Systems, the enterprise that would define him as one of the nation's most successful high-tech entrepreneurs. He was designated by Ernst & Young as the National Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year. In February 1997, Dr. Kim took the firm public; in May of that same year, Business Week ranked Yurie the #1 Hot Growth Company among all public companies in the United States. In 1998, Lucent acquired Yurie for $1.1 billion in cash. Dr. Kim stayed on with Lucent as a division president until 2001, when he returned to the University of Maryland as Professor of Practice in Reliability Engineering, with a joint appointment in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials and Nuclear Engineering. In 2005 he became the 11th President of Bell Labs - and the first recruited from outside the Labs in its 80+ history. Jeong brought an entrepreneurial vigor to the most revered name in American innovation. In the face of bracing industry headwinds, he transformed research interests into research ventures and kept Bell Labs at the forefront of commercially oriented R&D.

As a leading figure in technology innovation, Jeong has often been called on to lend his insights to the cause of national security and peace. He served on the U.S. Presidential Commission on Review of U.S. Intelligence, the External Advisory Board of the CIA, and the Award Committee for the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Currently he serves on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Jeong has also contributed his time and money to higher education. He has been a strong advocate of a cross-disciplined approach to an engineering education - a concept endorsed by the University of Maryland and designed into the architecture of the engineering building there that bears his name. Jeong has served on the boards of Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.

Dr. Kim has received numerous honors and awards and has served on several corporate boards. Recently the government of France awarded him membership in the Legion of Honor for his services in global technology. He was also nominated as Minister of Future Creation and Science for South Korea in February of 2013 though he withdrew his candidacy shortly thereafter.

In late 2013, Kim co-founded and became Chairman of Kiswe Mobile, a company focusing on interactive mobile video, returning to his passion of building a company that will bring exciting new technologies to the market.