Dr. Homin Shin obtained her B.S. and M.S. in physics from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea and her Ph.D. in physics from Syracuse University, in New York, USA. Her graduate work was followed by postdoctoral research associate positions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she explored a wide range of problems arising in soft condensed matter such as polymers, liquid crystals, and biomaterials, using a combination of analytic theory and computer simulation.
Dr. Shin joined the NRC in 2014 where she works on nanoscale materials theory. She enjoys revealing the fundamental physics and chemistry behind intriguing nanomaterials—deepening the understanding of not only the behaviour of individual atoms, but also their collective effects at a much larger scale—which will eventually lead to real-world applications.
Dr. Shin is a theorist and as such provides insights, predictions and fundamental design principles to the experimentalists in the NRC's Security and Disruptive Technologies Research Centre (SDT) to aid the discovery of brand new materials, particularly carbon or boron nitride nanotubes. This is a truly interdisciplinary field for which SDT provides an excellent platform encompassing physics, chemistry and engineering.
She also serves as the Vice-President (Government Affairs) of the Association of Korean–Canadian Scientists and Engineers, engaging in activities to promote the collaboration between two countries as well as to empower women in leadership.
"It's fascinating to me that we can create whole new materials that never existed before by manipulating behaviors at the atomic scale. As a theorist, I'm particularly thrilled when theoretical predictions are confirmed in experiments!"