Alumnus Nam Sung Kim named endowed chair at UIUC

Nam Sung Kim (PhD CSE ‘04), has been named the W.J. “Jerry” Sanders III – Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in recognition of his significant accomplishments.

Kim’s interdisciplinary research incorporates device, circuit, architecture, and software for power-efficient computing. He joined the faculty at UIUC in 2015, and from 2018 to 2020 he took a leave of absence to serve as a Sr. Vice President of Memory Business at Samsung Electronics, where he led the development of next-generation DRAM products that will play a significant role in shaping the future computing landscape. 

Prior to joining the University of Illinois, Kim was an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Preceding that, he was a senior research scientist at Intel from 2004 to 2008, where he conducted research in power-efficient digital circuit and process architecture. 

Kim has published more than 200 refereed articles to highly-selective conferences and journals in the field of digital circuit, processor architecture, and computer-aided design and has received a number of recognitions for his work including induction into the ISCA, HPCA and MICRO Halls of Fame, which each list researchers with eight or more papers in their conference with technological excellence and influence. While at the University of Michigan, Kim was advised by Bredt Family Professor of Engineering Trevor Mudge.