Dong-Hwa Seo
Also known as Donghwa Seo, 서동화
Dong-Hwa Seo is a materials scientist at KAIST whose group combines first-principles calculations, machine learning and robotic self-driving laboratories to discover battery materials. He earned a KAIST doctorate in 2011, worked with Gerbrand Ceder at MIT and Berkeley, and spent 2017 to 2019 at Samsung Research America. An Early Career Award from the International Battery Association in 2018 recognized his design of electrode and electrolyte materials with atomistic modeling and machine learning; he became a UNIST assistant professor in 2019 and a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in 2022. After he joined KAIST in 2023, his team built an autonomous cathode lab with POSCO Holdings, announced in August 2025. He is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at KAIST and an adjunct professor in its College of AI.
Timeline
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2007–2011
A KAIST doctorate
After a B.S. at Pusan National University in 2007, he completes an M.S. in materials science and engineering at KAIST in 2009 under Hyuck Mo Lee. He earns his KAIST Ph.D. in 2011 under Kisuk Kang, with a thesis on first-principles study of polyanion electrode materials for lithium rechargeable batteries.
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2011–2015
Postdoctoral years at SNU and MIT
From 2011 to 2013, he is a postdoctoral researcher at Seoul National University's Research Institute of Advanced Materials under Kisuk Kang. From 2013 to 2015, he is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT under Gerbrand Ceder.
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2016–2019
Berkeley Lab and Samsung
In 2016, he joins UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as an Associate Specialist, with Gerbrand Ceder as principal investigator. In 2017, he becomes a Senior Research Engineer in the Advanced Materials Lab at Samsung Research America in Burlington, Massachusetts.
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2018
An IBA Early Career Award
He receives the IBA Early Career Award at the International Battery Association conference on Jeju Island in March 2018. It recognizes his design of electrode and electrolyte materials by combining atomistic modeling with machine and deep learning methods.
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2019–2023
Assistant professor at UNIST
In December 2019, he joins UNIST in Ulsan as an assistant professor. Clarivate names him a Highly Cited Researcher in the cross-field category in 2022, and he holds a POSCO Science Fellowship from the POSCO TJ Park Foundation from 2022 to 2024.
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2023–2024
A battery AI lab at KAIST
In May 2023, he becomes an associate professor at KAIST and POSCO Distinguished Professor of Energy Materials, and leads the Computational Materials Design & Discovery Lab. In 2023, the lab's AI-driven non-flammable electrolyte study is a cover article in Energy & Environmental Science, and its ALBATROSS robotics system generates electrolyte data around the clock. Its manganese-based disordered rock-salt cathodes, free of nickel and cobalt, reach about 1050 Wh/kg-cathode and appear as cover articles in Advanced Materials in 2023 and Energy & Environmental Science in 2024.
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August 2025
An autonomous cathode lab
In August 2025, KAIST announces an autonomous lab that his team builds with the LIB Materials Research Center at POSCO Holdings' POSCO N.EX.T Hub. Separate modules for weighing, mixing, pelletizing, sintering and analysis run under a central robotic arm, and an AI model recommends the next cathode composition and synthesis conditions. Operating around the clock, the system can collect more than 12 times the experimental data and shorten material discovery time by 93%.
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As of October 2026
Professor at KAIST
He is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at KAIST and an adjunct professor in its College of AI, working on batteries, autonomous materials discovery and self-driving labs. In October 2026, his lab's proposal for a hardware-aware AI agent for self-driving laboratories in battery materials research is approved for Anthropic's AI for Science program. The team aims to use Claude to support the design, integration and operation of laboratory automation modules, beginning with an automated slurry-casting module.
Career
- Since 2023KAISTAssociate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
- 2019–2023Ulsan National Institute of Science and TechnologyAssistant Professor
- 2017–2019SamsungSenior Research Engineer
- 2016–2017University of California, BerkeleyAssociate Specialist
- 2016–2017Office of ScienceAssociate Specialist
- 2013–2015Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral researcher
- 2011–2013Seoul National UniversityPostdoctoral researcher
Education
- 2011KAISTPh.D.
- 2009KAISTM.S.
- 2007Pusan National UniversityB.S.
Colleagues
Sources and credits
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