Cha Meeyoung

Cha Meeyoung (born July 28, 1979), sometimes known as Mia, is an associate professor at KAIST in the School of Computing and a chief investigator in the Pioneer Research Center for Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the Institute for Basic Science. Her research focuses on network and data science with an emphasis on modeling, analyzing complex information propagation processes, machine learning-based computational social science, and deep learning. In June 2024, she will become the scientific director of the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy. She has served on the editorial boards of the journals PeerJ and ACM Transactions on Social Computing.

Early life and education
Mia was born in Daejeon, South Korea. She had a "boring" childhood in Chuncheon City, Gangwon Province where she often spent time alone in her thoughts. Growing up, she often would play with the novelist O Jeonghui's daughter as they were the same age and lived in the same apartment complex.

She went to Bongeui Middle School (ko) and then was one of the only female students attending Kangwon Science High School at that time. The entirety of Meeyoung's higher education has taken place at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea. She initially desired to major in astroypyhsics, as she grew up loving stars and was influenced by her physicist father, but KAIST had no degree in astroypyhsics. Majoring in computer science, she graduated magna cum laude for her B.S. Within the Graduate School for Culture Technology at KAIST, the adviser for her M.S. was Kim Taewhan, and her Ph.D. was supervised by Sue Moon.

Career
In 2008, Meeyoung worked as a postdoc in Max Planck Institute for Software Systems under adviser Krishna Gummadi. Leaving Max Planck, she returned to her alma mater and became an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Culture Technology later becoming an associate professor joint faculty member in the School of Computing. Outside of KAIST, she worked as a scientific and technical consultant for both SK Telecom and the Korea Internet Self-Governance Organization in 2010 and 2014, respectively.

In 2015, Meeyoung went to Menlo Park to work as a visiting professor with Facebook's Data Science Team hosted by Lada Adamic. In 2019, she and Oum Sang-il were the founding chief investigators of the Pioneer Research Center for Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS). This and the Pioneer Research Center for Biomolecular and Cellular Structure are the first of two such centers at IBS. Headed by Meeyoung, the Data Science Group researches fake news, perception biases in relation to AI, deep learning of heterogeneous data for modeling human behavior, and prediction efforts through language processing and image analysis. Seeing the infodemic on COVID-19 information starting in China and spreading to Korea and the US, the Data Science Group and researchers from Ewha Womans University, started the multilingual Facts Before Rumors campaign to separate common claims seen online.

She has been named BACUDA science collaborator of the World Customs Organization, is a member of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, and a commissioner for the Presidential Council on Intellectual Property, Open Data Mediation Committee, National Tax Service, Korea Customs Service, and Korea Copyright Commission.

In June 2024, she will relocate to the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Germany to become a scientific director at the Max Planck Society heading the Data Science for Humanity research group. She will become the first South Korea director and second Asian female scientist to hold such a position at Max Planck.

Awards and honors

 * 2024: Hong Jin-Ki Creator Award
 * 2022: Test of Time Award, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGCOMM
 * 2022: Commendation, 55th Science Day, Ministry of Science and ICT
 * 2020: Test of Time Award, International Conference on Web and Social Media
 * 2019: Young Information Scientist Award, Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers (ko)
 * 2016: Lifetime member, Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers
 * 2012: Best Paper, International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
 * 2009: Best Data Workshop Paper, 3rd Int'l AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
 * 2007: Best Paper, ACM Internet Measurement Conference

Editorial boards

 * 2016–present PeerJ
 * 2016–present ACM Transactions on Social Computing