Myungshik Kim

Myungshik Kim (born 1962) is a South Korean physicist working in the fields of quantum optics and quantum information science. He is Professor of Theoretical Quantum Information Science at Imperial College London.

Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea. He completed his undergraduate studies at Sogang University. He received his PhD in physics from Imperial College London in 1988 under the supervision of Peter Knight.

Following his doctoral studies, Kim held postdoctoral positions at Imperial College London, where he worked with Peter Knight and Rodney Loudon on problems in fundamental quantum optics, including nonclassical properties of light and light–matter interactions.

After returning to South Korea in the late 1980s, Kim joined the faculty of Sogang University. During a sabbatical period in 1997–1998, he was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, where his research expanded into quantum information processing.

In 2000, Kim moved to the United Kingdom to take up an academic position at Queen's University Belfast. He later returned to Imperial College London, where he has continued his research and teaching in theoretical quantum science. Since 2013, he has also served as Chair Professor in Quantum Information Science at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS).

Kim’s research focuses on quantum optics and quantum information processing. He has contributed to the theoretical development of quantum information protocols using coherent states, including early proposals for coherent-state–based quantum computation.

His work spans several areas of quantum science, including quantum plasmonics and optomechanical approaches to probing fundamental physics. More recently, his research has addressed error management in quantum computing and quantum simulation methods aimed at practical implementations.

Kim has received several research awards and honours, including the Wolfson Research Award from the Royal Society and the Ho-Am Prize in Science.

• Jeong, H.; Kim, M. S. “Efficient quantum computation using coherent states.” Physical Review A 65, 042305 (2002).
• Tame, M. S. et al. “Quantum plasmonics.” Nature Physics 9, 329–340 (2013).
• Pikovski, I. et al. “Probing Planck-scale physics with quantum optics.” Nature Physics 8, 393–397 (2012).