About

Sung Woo Kim, Ph.D., is the William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Animal Science at North Carolina State University. He earned his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in Animal Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the mentorship of Dr. Robert A Easter, and holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in Animal Nutrition and Animal Science from Seoul National University, Korea. Dr. Kim has held academic positions at Texas Tech University and North Carolina State University, where he has been a full professor since 2012. His research expertise lies in animal nutrition, physiology, and biotechnology, with a focus on non-ruminant nutrition, gut health, and the nutritional regulation of animal growth and development. He has contributed significantly to the understanding of amino acid nutrition, oxidative stress, and the modulation of gut microbiota in pigs, as evidenced by his leadership roles in numerous scientific symposia and editorial positions in leading journals in animal science and nutrition. Dr. Kim's work has been recognized with multiple prestigious awards, including the Vernon R. Young International Award for Amino Acid Research and the American Feed Industry Association Award in Non-Ruminant Nutrition Research. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on advisory groups and editorial boards internationally, reflecting his global impact on animal nutrition research and education.

Research topics

• Biology
• Food science
• Chemistry
• Medicine
• Endocrinology
• Animal science
• Biotechnology
• Immunology
• Internal medicine
• Environmental health
• Bioinformatics
• Microbiology
• Toxicology
• Botany
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Quantification of the absolute abundance of the jejunal mucosa-associated microbiota of pigs using spike-in control

  Microbiome Research Reports · 2026-03-18

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The objective was to quantify the absolute abundance of the jejunal mucosa-associated microbiota in pigs and develop a standardized spike-in control protocol. The spike-in control, containing bacteria that are Gram-negative (Imtechella halotolerans) and Gram-positive (Allobacillus halotolerans), was diluted 100 times and 10 μL (100,000 bacterial cells of each species) was added to 100 mg of porcine jejunal mucosa samples. The relative abundance of the jejunal mucosa-associated microbiota differed between the diet groups, whereas no difference was observed in their absolute abundance. In conclusion, the spike-in control containing 100,000 cells of Imtechella halotolerans and Allobacillus halotolerans can be used to quantify the absolute abundance of microbiota in 100 mg of pig jejunal mucosa.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Physio-Mamba: Physiologically-Guided Mamba Network for Continuous Calibration-Free Abp Reconstruction from PPG

  2026-04-21

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Continuous Arterial Blood Pressure (ABP) monitoring requires invasive arterial catheterization, while non-invasive cuff-based devices only provide intermittent spot readings and are unsuitable for continuous monitoring. We introduce Physio-Mamba, a physiology-informed framework for reconstructing continuous ABP waveforms from photoplethysmography (PPG). The model encodes physiology at the input by processing PPG together with the acceleration photoplethysmogram (APG), and at the objective by using a Physiological-Dynamic loss that aligns second-order pressure dynamics to preserve clinically salient features. A Mamba-based MaskNet offers bidirectional long-context temporal modeling with linear time and memory complexity. In subject-independent splits of the Sensors dataset and cross-dataset testing on BCG, Physio-Mamba achieves competitive accuracy, preserves key morphology such as the systolic upstroke and the dicrotic notch, and generalizes across datasets. These results show that embedding explicit physiological priors is a practical and effective route to cuffless ABP reconstruction. Furthermore, they motivate causal real-time variants, uncertainty-aware outputs, and broader clinical validation.

  PublisherDOI

• Liquid Metals for Reconfigurable Bioelectronics

  Advanced Materials · 2026-03-20

  article

  Future bioelectronic technologies must evolve beyond passive softness toward active reconfigurability, enabling intelligent interfaces that adapt to dynamic physiological and environmental changes. However, the inherently static architectures of most current devices hinder such adaptive reconfiguration or performance tuning, leading to a functional mismatch between dynamic biological systems and static electronic architectures. To bridge this gap, reconfigurable bioelectronics have emerged as a transformative paradigm capable of dynamically modulating their physical form and function in response to external or physiological stimuli. Liquid metals (LMs)-combining deformability, tunable stiffness, high electrical/thermal conductivity, multi-stimuli responsiveness, and biocompatibility-offer a unique material platform for realizing intrinsic reconfigurability without structural complexity. By leveraging their material-level reconfigurability, LM-based bioelectronics achieve robust performance, versatile functionality, and dynamic biointegration, enabling multifunctional diagnostic, therapeutic, and interactive systems. This review provides a comprehensive overview of LM-based reconfigurable bioelectronics, encompassing fundamental material properties, fabrication and design strategies, and major reconfiguration mechanisms. It further highlights emerging biomedical applications, ranging from implantable and wearable systems to soft robotics and haptic interfaces, and discusses key challenges and future directions for advancing LM-based bioelectronics toward clinically viable, intelligent, and multifunctional platforms.

  PublisherDOI

• Optimized smoke removal sprinkler for fire safety

  Process Safety and Environmental Protection · 2026-04-18

  articleOpen access

  Smoke and toxic gas inhalation account for 60–70% of global fire-related fatalities, yet conventional sprinklers, while effective at suppressing flames, fail to remove these hazards and can worsen smoke logging. We developed a fire smoke removal sprinkler that applies the Bernoulli and Venturi effects to actively draw in and expel smoke during water discharge. Its geometry was optimized through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and validated by controlled experiments. In toxic gas tests, the system reduced ammonia (NH₃) concentration by 80% within 60 s—1.5 times faster than a standard sprinkler. The results demonstrate enhanced evacuation visibility, reduced asphyxiation risk, and potential prevention of backdraft and flashover in real fire scenarios. A new sprinkler quickly clears smoke and toxic gases during fires, improving visibility and safety.

  PublisherDOI

• Reinforced Sweet Potato Starch Bioplastics with Kenaf Fiber and Indian Jujube Extract

  Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering · 2026-03-09

  article
  PublisherDOI

• PSX-29 Application of substandard jujube meal in pig diets: Energy value and nutrient availability.

  Journal of Animal Science · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Substandard jujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.) fruits—cracked, undersized, or mechanically/insect damaged—account for 20% to 35% of global production yet retain high levels of sugars, polysaccharides, phenolics, and flavonoids. Converting these abundant by-products into jujube meals offers a sustainable, value-added alternative to traditional cereals, such as corn, reducing feed costs and environmental waste while delivering bioactive compounds. However, baseline data on its nutritive value in swine are lacking. This study therefore aimed to (1) establish the digestible energy (DE), metabolizable energy (ME), and apparent nutrient digestibility of high-quality and substandard jujube meals in pigs, and (2) apply these values to formulate diets containing graded levels of substandard jujube meal to assess effects on energy utilization and apparent nutrient digestibility. Two sequential metabolism trials were performed using Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire barrows in individual crates. In Exp. 1, eight pigs (50.04 ± 0.76 kg) were used in a 4 × 4 Latin-square design (7 d adaptation + 7 d total collection). About 50% of the corn in a basal diet was replaced by high-quality jujube (HJ) or one of three substandard grades (SJ1, SJ2, SJ3) collected from different regions to determine DE, ME, and apparent nutrient digestibility of crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE), neutral-detergent fiber (NDF), acid-detergent fiber (ADF), calcium, and phosphorus. In Exp. 2, ME and nutrient digestibility values from Exp. 1 guided the formulation of four growing diets containing 0% (JP0), 5% (JP5), 10% (JP10), or 15% (JP15) substandard jujube meal. Sixteen pigs (57.40 ± 0.60 kg) were provided with grower diets. Each diet was fed for 14 d (7 d of adaptation + 7 d of collection) to measure DE, ME, and apparent nutrient digestibility. The data were analyzed using SAS 9.4 (Cary, NC, USA) with a one-way ANOVA test. Results showed that HJ provided higher (P < 0.05) DE (13.76 MJ/kg) and ME (13.22 MJ/kg) than SJ1 (11.57 MJ/kg, 11.13 MJ/kg), SJ2 (10.96 MJ/kg, 10.42 MJ/kg), and SJ3 (10.58 MJ/kg, 10.20 MJ/kg). The DE/GE and ME/GE ratios were greater (P < 0.05) for HJ (83.2%, 80.0%) than for SJ1, SJ2, and SJ3 (68.6 - 71.3%, 66.1 - 68.6%), and ME/DE did not differ (95 - 96%). In Exp. 2, inclusion of up to 15% of substandard jujube powder did not affect DE, ME, apparent digestibility, or nitrogen retention relative to JP0. In conclusion, this work provides the first comprehensive dataset on the nutritive value of jujube meals for pigs. It demonstrates that substandard jujube can replace up to 15% of corn in finishing diets without compromising energy utilization or nutrient digestibility, thereby enabling the formulation of jujube-based feed and supporting future research on functional benefits in swine production.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Impact of dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitor use on mortality in diabetic Parkinson's disease patients: A nationwide cohort study

  Parkinsonism & Related Disorders · 2025-11-11

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Effects of fermented rice bran extract with multi-microbial species on intestinal health and growth of nursery pigs

  Animal Bioscience · 2025-08-25

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of fermented rice bran extract (FRB) with multi-microbial species on intestinal health and growth performance of nursery pigs. METHODS: Thirty weaned pigs (initial body weight = 6.8±0.8 kg) were allocated to 3 dietary treatments in a randomized complete block design (n = 10 per treatment) and fed for 25 d in 2 phases (7 and 18 d, respectively). Pigs were housed individually in pens equipped with a feeder and a nipple drinker. Pigs were fed a basal diet supplemented with 0%, 0.5%, or 1.0% FRB. The main feedstuffs of the basal diet were corn, soybean meal, whey permeate, and blood plasma. The FRB was prepared by fermenting rice bran with Lactobacillus plantarum, Bacillus subtilis, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and contained at least 1×107 CFU/g. On d 25, pigs were euthanized to collect intestinal tissues and mucosa for intestinal health. RESULTS: The supplementation of FRB decreased (p<0.05) the abundance of Desulfovibrio piger in the jejunal mucosa. Malondialdehyde and protein carbonyl in the duodenum linearly decreased (p<0.05) and the villus height to crypt depth ratio in the jejunum linearly increased (p<0.05) with increasing FRB supplementation. The apparent ileal digestibility of gross energy and crude protein tended to linearly increase (p = 0.084 and p = 0.098, respectively). Body weight on d 25 and overall average daily gain tended to show quadratic responses (p = 0.084 and p = 0.095, respectively) with increasing FRB supplementation. The gain to feed ratio (G:F) was maximized when the FRB intake was 2.7 g/d (0.48%) during d 7 to 25. CONCLUSION: Dietary supplementation with FRB with multi-microbial species improved intestinal health based on immune response, oxidative stress, and morphology. The growth performance of nursery pigs showed quadratic responses with increasing FRB supplementation. Specifically, the G:F was maximized with supplementation of FRB at 0.48%.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Analysis of Changes in Rice Harvest Timing Using Deep Learning- Based Climate Prediction

  Research Square · 2025-09-11

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• PSVII-20 Functional requirement of nicotinamide for growth performance, blood profiles, and gut health of finishing pigs.

  Journal of Animal Science · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The growing use of low-protein diets in the swine industry may reduce the natural intake of nicotinic acid from traditional feed sources such as soybean meal. This could potentially compromise the health and growth performance of pigs. Nicotinamide supplementation could therefore play a critical role in meeting metabolic demands. This study aimed to investigate the functional requirements of nicotinamide in finishing pigs fed low-protein diets, focusing on blood parameters, intestinal health, and growth performance. Sixty-four pigs (80 ± 0.13 kg body weight) were randomly assigned to four dietary treatments supplemented with 30 (NAM30), 130 (NAM130), 230 (NAM230), and 330 (NAM330) mg/kg nicotinamide for 30 days. Each treatment had four replicate pens and four pigs per pen. Parameters assessed included growth performance, serum physiology and biochemistry, oxidative stress markers, immune indicators, rectal volatile fatty acids (VFAs), and rectal microbiota. Data was analyzed using SAS 9.4 (Cary, NC, USA), and polynomial contrasts were used to assess linear and quadratic effects of increasing niacinamide levels. A contrast was used to compare the NAM30 and NAM130 groups. The NAM130 group showed higher (P &amp;lt; 0.05) hemoglobin levels compared with the NAM30 group. Serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels increased both linearly and quadratically (P &amp;lt; 0.05), with the highest response observed at 221 mg/kg, suggesting a threshold for potential physiological effects. The NAM130 group showed lower serum malondialdehyde (MDA) levels (P &amp;lt; 0.05) compared with NAM230, while glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) levels tended to increase linearly (P = 0.066). Serum interleukin-1β (IL-1β) levels decreased (P &amp;lt; 0.05) in the NAM130 group compared to NAM230 and showed a linear increase (P &amp;lt; 0.05) with higher nicotinamide supplementation. Furthermore, the NAM130 group reduced (P &amp;lt; 0.05) the abundance of Streptococcus and the Simpson diversity index compared with the NAM30 group. No significant differences were observed in average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI), or gain-to-feed ratio (G:F) across treatments. In conclusion, dietary supplementation with 130 mg/kg nicotinamide improved oxidative status, oxygen transport capacity, inflammatory regulation, and gut microbial composition in finishing pigs fed low-protein diets, without significantly affecting growth performance. In contrast, higher supplementation levels exceeding 220 mg/kg may induce physiological stress, as indicated by elevated ALT levels. These findings suggest that 130 mg/kg is an effective and safe level for supporting health in finishing pigs on a low-protein diet.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K01DK002867

  NIH · $291k · 2004

• NIH Grant R01HL065477

  NIH · $4.3M · 2014

Frequent coauthors

• Guoyao Wu

  Texas A&M University

  79 shared

• Marcos Elias Duarte

  North Carolina State University

  70 shared

• Si Yeol Song

  University of Ulsan

  63 shared

• Yeoung‐Gyu Ko

  National Health Research Institutes

  58 shared

• Yulong Yin

  Hunan Agricultural University

  54 shared

• Jungwon Kwak

  Asan Medical Center

  52 shared

• Nobuhiro Takiguchi

  Chiba Cancer Center

  49 shared

• Hiroshi Yamamoto

  Kyoto University

  49 shared

Labs

• Kim LabPI

  Not provided

Education

• Ph.D., Animal Science

  North Carolina State University

  2005

• M.S., Animal Science

  North Carolina State University

  2002

• B.S., Animal Science

  North Carolina State University

  2000

Awards & honors

• William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor, University
• Faculty Scholar