Background and education Sung-Mo “Steve” Kang was born and raised in
Seoul, Korea. Kang is the first in his family to attend college. Kang’s grandfather, who fought for
Korean independence and experienced Japanese occupation, helped him to immigrate to the U.S. and study electrical engineering to become a college professor. As a distinguished scholar and a leader in engineering education, Kang has gone beyond this dream. Kang received his B.S. from
Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1970, his M.S. from
State University of New York at Buffalo in 1972 and his Ph.D. from
University of California at Berkeley in 1975. All his academic degrees are in
electrical engineering.
Career After his graduation, he has taught at various universities in the U.S., Germany and Switzerland, and worked as a technician and supervisor at
AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. He was a visiting professor at the
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the
University of Karlsruhe and the
Technical University of Munich, and a chaired visiting professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He has also taught at
Rutgers University. Kang joined the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an associate professor electrical and computer engineering in 1985, and was promoted to professor in 1990. From 1995 to 2000, Kang served as the head of the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he was the first department head of foreign origin in 110 years. He was honored as the first Charles Marshall Senior University Scholar and directed several research organizations. From 2001 to 2007, Kang served as dean of the
Baskin School of Engineering at
UC Santa Cruz. During this time, Kang brought the Baskin School from infancy to its current standing as a well-regarded graduate school of engineering. Since taking the position in 2001, he doubled the size of the faculty, recruiting the highest caliber professors and researchers to the growing school. Federal research funding increased four-fold during Kang’s tenure, from $5 million to $20 million, and the school’s scholarship fund has grown by tenfold. In his six years as dean of engineering, he took a nascent program to significantly higher levels of achievement during its second phase of development. In 2007, Kang became the second chancellor of the
University of California, Merced, succeeding
Carol Tomlinson-Keasey. Kang also teaches at the school of engineering as a professor. Kang was the president of
KAIST from 2013 to 2017.
Other activities and leadership While at UC Santa Cruz, Kang chaired the UC Santa Cruz Chancellor’s Education Partnership Advisory Committee. He also served on advisory committees for the National Youth Leadership Forum and the Silicon Valley Engineering, Manufacturing and Technology Alliance. Kang has forged important partnerships with the
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), the California Institute for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), and NASA's University Affiliated Research Center. He attracted a $2 million
National Science Foundation program for Developing Effective Engineering Pathways (DEEP) for community college students in the Silicon Valley region. He has also served on the advisory boards for UC’s COSMOS and MESA programs. Kang initiated and established several international programs at UC, including executive programs for managers from Korea and exchange programs with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (
EPFL),
Hokkaido Information University,
KAIST,
Yonsei University,
Konkuk University,
Seoul National University,
POSTECH, and the
Catholic University of Daegu. ==Membership==