Green Growth: The Right Approach to Multiple Energy Sources
by Dr. Jayoung Koo, President, SK Energy, Seoul, Korea
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA, 28 August 2009―The 19th (2009) Annual International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference – ISOPE-2009 Osaka, the world's largest program of its kind with peer-reviewed papers – was held at the Osaka International Convention Center in Japan on June 21-26..
One of the conference highlights took place on June 23. It centered on the 2009 Jin S Chung Award, presented to Dr. Jayong Koo, President, SK Energy, Seoul, Korea, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the offshore, ocean and polar engineering fields. The creative and innovative aspects of Dr. Koo’s excellent discovery and his development of Innovative New Materials Technology were recognized to be in keeping with the purpose of the award. Dr. Koo delivered the Jin S Chung Award Lecture that evening at the annual banquet.
Dr. Koo joined the Corporate Research Laboratory of Exxon Research and Engineering Company in Linden, New Jersey, in 1980. His early research activities included the understanding of deactivation and regeneration of the Pt-KL zeolite and HDN/HDS catalysts through high-resolution electron microscopy. Subsequently, his work was directed at establishing a science platform for high-strength steels so as to develop structure-property relationships and alloy design concepts for structural steels and weldments. In 1996, Dr. Koo was appointed Section Head of the Advanced Structural Materials section, where he provided leadership in research programs including High-Strength Pipeline Steels, PLNG, Erosion-Resistant Materials, Corrosion-Resistant Carbon Steels, Polymer Composites, and Inorganic Membranes. He was a key inventor of the X120 pipeline steels for high-pressure gas transmission, leading the team from laboratory proof-of-principle to commercial scale-up and the successful installation of the demonstration pipeline in Alberta, Canada. Further, he was the key inventor of the PLNG steels, the development of the low-cost cryogenic steels required for the success of the technology. In recent years, Dr. Koo has served as the CSR Upstream Breakthrough Research Advisor and the scientific leader for the development of high-strain capacity steels for applications in the Arctic and seismically active regions.
In addition, throughout his career at ExxonMobil, Dr. Koo made numerous contributions to providing technology solutions to major business projects, the more recent being process modifications to manufacturing steam cracker tubulars, novel steels for the Sakhalin pipelines,
and fatigue-resistant risers for the Hoover-Diana platform. During his career, Dr. Koo has authored numerous company reports, books, patents, and external publications. He has been very active with professional societies, serving as a charter member (1990- ) and a member (2004-08) of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Offshore and Polar Engineers. His strong networks and connections with external technical communities helped provide rapid solutions to many technical challenges at ExxonMobil.
Dr. Koo has made significant contributions to ISOPE and to materials and welding societies. He has invited his colleagues to organize materials technology sessions at the annual ISOPE conference: the 1st Strain Based Design Symposium, High Performance Materials Symposium, and Nanomaterials Symposium.
Recently Dr. Koo returned to Korea to take up the presidency of SK Energy Co. Ltd.
The Jin S Chung Award Lecture presentation will be published in the International Journal of Offshore and Polar Engineers, ISOPE’s principal periodical.
From Wataru Koterayama and Ronald H Knapp, ISOPE Co-President (2008-2009), meetings@isope.org