PI of the IMPACT Lab​

Soh Young In is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Affiliate Faculty of the Graduate School of Green Growth and Sustainability at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST). She also serves as a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Finance Initiative (SFI) at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Before joining KAIST, Soh Young led financial innovation research at the Stanford SFI for 4 years, and she also served as the Director of Sustainable Finance Research at the Stanford University Korea Center.  

Soh Young’s research interest is demonstrating environmental, social, and economic incentives related to low-carbon transition and implementing sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems through behavior change of various stakeholders. She studies corporate management, investment strategies, infrastructure development, and public policies required to adopt and mitigate risks posed by climate change and decarbonization transition. Her three main research topics as “Climate Risk Analysis,” “Sustainable Integration,” and “Data-Driven System Transformation.”  

Her interdisciplinary research is uniquely positioned as it integrates technology, finance, and policy innovation to accelerate the global net-zero transition. Soh Young received research awards from the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) in 2016 and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Council in 2017. She conducted collaborative research with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) on fostering entrepreneurship in the cleantech sector.  

Soh Young holds a B.A. in Economics and Statistics from Columbia University, an M.A. in International Policy from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. In her professional career, Soh Young has worked for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Korea Development Bank (KDB), and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and is an economic and financial advisor to the Green Climate Fund (GCF).