I am a sociologist who studies science, technology, environment, and social theory. I earned my Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and a Master's degree in Science and Technology Policy at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). I finished my Ph.D. degree in Sociology with joint-Ph.D in Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

My ongoing research projects broadly raise and answer questions of science, democracy, and power. In context of the tradition of civic/citizen science, I aim to rethink various forms of civic engagement of science that ultimately build "science with people," an agenda that democracy and expertise become not only compatible, but also complementary.

 

In my research, I investigate how power operates in the scientific field. For instance, part of my dissertation revealed how scientists (and science) were impacted by the Trump administration's environmental funding renewal. From a broad perspective, my research aims to connect macro-scale social power and micro-foundation of everyday politics of knowledge, maintained and articulated within the institutional matrix. In so doing, my research contributes to sociologists' enduring question of how social inequality is buttressed by collective projects of various social institutions.

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I have taught numerous undergraduate sociology classes in various institutions. My previous teaching experience includes Sociology of Science and Technology, Environmental Sociology, Sociological Methods, American Society: How it Really Works, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.