Samsung Display CEO named SID fellow
Samsung Display CEO Yi Chung
Samsung Display CEO Yi Chung has been named a fellow of the Society for Information Display (SID), one of the highest honors in the global display industry, the company said Thursday.
SID, widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious academic organization in the display sector, awards fellow status to members who have made outstanding and widely recognized engineering or scientific contributions to the display field. The number of fellows selected each year is traditionally limited to approximately 0.1 percent of the society’s total membership.
“For pioneering the world's first foldable OLED displays and multiple other advances in OLED display technology, and for leadership in advancing display ecosystems toward energy efficiency and environmental sustainability,” SID said.
Yi, who joined Samsung in 1992 and holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology, has played a key role in advancing the company’s display technologies. Promoted to an executive position in panel development in 2012, he contributed to the development of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S series and flexible OLED displays.
He also helped lay the groundwork for Samsung Display to achieve the world’s first mass production of foldable OLED panels in 2019.
Yi additionally led the development of LEAD, a groundbreaking technology commercialized by Samsung Display in 2021. LEAD eliminates the need for a conventional polarizer in OLED panels by embedding anti-reflection functionality within the pixels themselves. The technology improves light efficiency, boosts brightness, reduces power consumption and enables thinner panel designs, offering greater flexibility in product design.
The technology is now widely adopted in flagship devices, supporting innovation in mobile displays.
Yi has also led several industry-first milestones, including the mass production of flexible displays with integrated touch sensors in 2016, full-screen OLED panels with camera holes in 2018 and OLEDs supporting a variable refresh rate of 1 to 120 hertz with always-on display functionality in 2022. His contributions have played a key role in establishing OLED as the dominant technology in the mobile display market.
Meanwhile, Lee Chang-hee, Samsung Display's chief technology officer, received the Jan Rajchman Award, one of SID’s top individual honors recognizing outstanding academic achievements and groundbreaking technological contributions in the display field.
Lee was recognized for his pioneering work in developing innovative displays and components utilizing OLED, quantum dot and nano LED technologies.