Koo Jung-hun (CHEM, Integrated) was awarded the golden prize from Samsung Electro-Mechanics for their 13th Thesis Paper Grand Prix. Koo wrote a thesis paper about nanospace-confined solid-state reactions. His research features useful methods for synthesizing a wide range of catalyst nanocrystals. The paper suggests a method to suppress the random diffusion and aggregation of highly reactive nanoparticles, which is a hindrance when synthesizing crystals of metal to use as a catalysts at a high-temperature solid phase reaction. Koo suggested limiting the nanoparticles’ reactions inside a limited region inside a silica nanoparticle, making it able to synthesize a variety of metal catalysts. His idea was considered remarkable.