Kyungwha Park *00

Kyungwha died of lung cancer Aug. 14, 2025, in Blacksburg, Va. She was 55.

She was born Oct. 11, 1969, in Tongyeong, South Korea. In 1991, she graduated with a degree in physics from Korea University, where she went on to earn an MS degree in physics in 1993. Kyungwha received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton in 2000, after which she held postdoctoral positions at Florida State University and the Naval Research Laboratory.

In 2005, Kyungwha joined the Virginia Tech physics department as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 2019. Her research area was theoretical condensed matter physics, with expertise in the electronic, magnetic, and transport properties of spin-orbit-coupled nanostructures and molecular magnets. She and her research group were funded by the Jeffress Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy.

Kyungwha was honored as the Korean American Women in Science and Engineering Outstanding Woman Scientist in 2015. She received a Fulbright fellowship, which she carried out at the Wigner Research Center for Physics in Budapest.

Kyungwha was predeceased by her husband, Youngjai Kiem *95, in 2002.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.