Academic Career

Jungwoo came to the United States as an exchange student.

Jungwoo received a Special Chancellor's award from UMKC, which allowed him to finish his undergraduate and graduate degrees there. He earned his B.S. (1996) and M.S. (1998) in Computer Science from the School of Computing and Engineering at UMKC.

Motivated by his research experience at UMKC, he decided to pursue his doctorate in Computer Science at the University of Kansas under the supervision of professor Hossein Saiedian. On May 25, 2005 he earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department at KU. His main research interests lie in Software Engineering, Computer Networking, and Computer Security.

Industry Experience

Jungwoo joined the Sprint corporation (now, Sprint Nextel) as a software engineer in 2001. Sprint Nextel is the third largest wireless carrier in the United States.

At Sprint he had an opportunity to be fully exposed to all the aspects of a software development life cycle including requirements elicitation, architecting, designing, writing source code, testing, and supporting customers.

At the capacity of a software architect, he was involved in developing telecommunications network configuration and management software in numerous, large-scale projects. While working with Sprint, he was nominated twice as the most effective employee of the year. In 2004 he moved to IBM for better opportunities.

Academic Experience

Teaching and research are Jungwoo's main motivations for having joined a doctorate program at KU. He regards teaching and research as priviledges given only to a selected few. Right after receiving his Ph.D. degree, he left IBM for an academic position at the Penn Sate University. Since fall 2005, he has been an assistant professor in Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State Altoona.

Military Service

Jungwoo served in the Republic of Korea (RoK) Army for two and a half years. He was part of Korean Augmentation To the United States Army (KATUSA), a special group of Korean Army soldiers assigned to U.S. military bases throughout Korea providing interpretation services in addition to their military specialties. He was an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) stationed at camp Hialiah in Busan, Korea. During his military service he received an Expert Field Medical Badge (EFMB) and an Army commendation medal from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Family Life

Jungwoo is happily married to his wife Hyeseon. They married in January 1998 and have three sons (Hojin, Eugene, and Youngjin). Hyeseon has two Master's degrees (one in English literature and the other in Educational Psychology).

Jungwoo has two sisters, Jaebie and Jahyun who are formally educated artists. Jaebie majored in Oil Painting and is activly pursuing her career as an artist. Jahyun majored in Music Composition and now leads a team of musicians.