About Chin Woo Kim

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Chin-Woo Kim was born on March 22, 1936 in Chungju, Republic of Korea. He graduated from Yonsei University in Seoul in 1958 and received his doctorate in Linguistics from UCLA in 1966. Since then, he has also held positions at MIT, Yonsei University, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Dr. Kim first came to the University of Illinois in 1967. He has served the campus in many ways,  including as the Head of the UIUC Linguistics Department and the Head of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

His work on Korean linguistics have become the foundations of a now robust subfield of Korean phonology, inspiring students across the globe. Dr. Kim’s publications span a wide range of topics, including theoretical phonetics, experimental phonetics, syntax, language policies, language education, and globalization.

Dr. Kim is recognized in the 1972 World Dictionary of Linguists and the 1973 World List of Phoneticians. He was named a noteworthy scholar, educator, and linguist by Marquis Who’s Who. He served as President of the International Association for Humanistic Studies of Language from 2000-2008. Dr. Kim was also named as an Outstanding Intellectual of the 21st Century by Cambridge’s International Biographical Center.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Dr. Kim has spent decades strengthening programs in Linguistics, Korean Language and Culture, and Phonology. His contributions have been essential to the creation and development of the Phonetics and Phonology Lab and our Linguistics research at the University of Illinois. We cannot give enough thanks and acknowledgement to Dr. Kim for his service to our research.

About this Award

The C.W. Kim Research Award in Linguistics is given each year to one or more Ph.D. students in Linguistics who have excelled in their research, as evidenced by their record of publications and/or conference presentations. The awardees are nominated by their advisors or other faculty familiar with their research, and the award is decided on by the Linguistics awards committee. This award was made possible through the generous contribution of Professor Emeritus Chin-Woo Kim to recognize outstanding research of graduate students.

Past Recipients

YearRecipient
2024Huiying Cai, Mingyue Huo and Britni Moore
2023Jennifer Zhang
2022Ping-Lin Chuang and Aylin Coskun Kunduz
2021Wafa Abdulla, Yan Sun, Anna Tsiola and Mien-Jen Wu
2020Sea Hee Choi and Taraneh Sanei
2019Ha Ram Kim and Benjamin Weissman
2018Andrew Armstrong and Patrick Drackley
2017Kailen Shantz
2016Lydia Catedral, Farzad Karimzad Sharifi and Tatiana Luchkina
2015Rania Al-Sabbagh and Daniel Scarpace
2014Staci Defibaugh and Hie-Jung You
2013Kate Kokhan
2012Karen Lichtman and Eunah Kim
2011Erica Britt
2010Benjamin Slade
2009Archna Bhatia
2008Yoonsook Mo and Laura Felton
2007Youngju Choi and Ji-Hye Kim