Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) professor Kim Hyung-lok / Courtesy of GIST
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) said Monday its professor Kim Hyung-lok of the Department of Environmental and Energy Engineering has been appointed as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (IEEE TGRS), a leading international journal in earth science and remote sensing.
Kim will serve at least three years from 2026 to 2029, overseeing the entire peer-review workflow, managing manuscript evaluations and issuing editorial recommendations to help maintain the journal’s quality and fairness.
Founded in 1962, IEEE TGRS is regarded as one of the most prestigious journals in the field, covering a broad range of topics including Earth observation, satellite remote sensing, electromagnetic-based surface sensing, Earth system physics, signal processing and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Its editorial board includes globally recognized scholars in each subfield.
Kim was appointed to join the board in recognition of his academic contributions in satellite microwave remote sensing, soil moisture and hydroclimate interactions and AI application to Earth system forecasting.
“I am deeply honored to join the editorial board of one of the world’s foremost journals in remote sensing,” Kim said. “I will help promote outstanding research achievements from Korean scholars to the global academic community through active collaboration and exchange.”
The professor has led pioneering research using diverse satellite datasets to monitor soil moisture and changes in the water cycle. He has also analyzed interactions among water, energy and climate and developed AI-driven Earth system forecasting models.
Kim was the first in Korea to sign an academic collaboration agreement with NASA. He has also established a core validation site in South Jeolla Province to verify the accuracy of satellite-derived soil moisture measurements, which serves as a global-standard infrastructure designed to enhance the reliability of satellite observation data.
He is a member of the American Geophysical Union’s remote sensing technical committee, contributing to shaping research directions, academic programs and policies that influence the global research landscape.
Recently, Kim has been focusing on developing next-generation Earth system prediction technologies by combining AI models trained on atmospheric and Earth system data with satellite microwave observations, advancing soil moisture forecasting, early drought detection and extreme weather analysis.
Source: Korea Times News
