Professor Jae Choon Cha of the Department of Mathematics at POSTECH has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Korea Science Award, one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for scientific achievement, presented by the Ministry of Science and ICT. The award ceremony was held on December 18 at the Korea Science and Technology Center, where Professor Cha received a Presidential Citation along with a research grant of 70 million KRW.

 The Korea Science Award recognizes researchers who have made world-class contributions to the advancement of basic science. Professor Cha was honored for his groundbreaking work in topology, particularly for resolving fundamental problems in manifold and knot theory.

 In particular, Professor Cha developed a new framework known as Disk Embedding Theory, producing major theoretical results on the possibility and impossibility of disk embeddings—long regarded as a central challenge in four-dimensional topological manifold theory. In addition, he was the first to discover transfinite invariants of three-dimensional manifolds, leading to the resolution of a longstanding problem posed by John Milnor that had remained unsolved for more than six decades. His work has had a profound impact across topology and geometry and has received widespread international recognition.

 This achievement once again highlights the strength of POSTECH’s Department of Mathematics in fundamental research and underscores the growing presence of Korean mathematics on the global stage. The department remains committed to supporting research that addresses the most fundamental questions in basic science and to fostering world-class scholarly excellence.

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