Sung Soo Kim is assistant professor in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His lab uses Drosophila melanogaster to probe how neural circuits transform sensory information into internal representations that guide navigation and complex behavior.
Originally trained as an electrical engineer, Kim earned his B.S at Seoul National University and his M.S. at the same school for building an artificial neural network controller for a nuclear power plant steam generator. He then became interested in real neural networks and shifted to neuroscience, completing a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and postdoctoral research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus.
His contributions have been recognized with the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Program, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Searle Scholarship, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award, a McKnight Scholar Award, and an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.