Doyoung Kim, ENG ’26, won first place at Temple’s annual Three-Minute Thesis Competition, which lets graduate students from the schools and colleges share a three-minute version of their research with an audience. 

Last spring, Doyoung Kim, ENG ’26, won judges over with a first-place finish in Temple’s 2026 Three-minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, an annual event where graduate students from across the university share a three-minute version of their research in front of an audience in the Feinstein Lounge at Sullivan Hall.

The event was essentially a launchpad for Kim, who won for her research on “Curved Surgical Needles: Why Insertion Strategies Matter” and quickly landed a teaching assistant professor position in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at Lehigh University in July.  

“I am so grateful to be at Lehigh, helping students understand the fundamentals of engineering and teaching the exact subjects that started my academic journey,” said Kim, a native of South Korea. “This subject is the foundation of almost everything engineers build; every building, bridge, car and airplane has to carry loads safely.  

“I teach about 37 lecture topics, so seeing my students have the ‘aha moment’ after a hard problem suddenly starts to make sense for them is a great feeling,” she added.  

The courses and subject matter that Kim now teaches directly relate to her time spent at Temple.

As a graduate research assistant, Kim tested and developed a curved needle insertion method for more precise targeting in minimally invasive surgery, such as during a biopsy procedure to remove tissue samples to detect if a patient has cancer, which she presented at the 2026 3MT Competition.

At Temple, she also had her first journal article, “Effect of Curvilinear Insertion on Mechanics of Curved Needles in Tissue-Mimicking Material,” published in the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. In it, she highlighted more of how the curvilinear insertion method significantly reduces the average transverse force compared to the linear insertion technique, enabling more precise targeting in minimally invasive surgery and decreasing tissue damage during insertion. Her research showed it could impact robotic surgery applications by helping engineers develop devices that can enable the most effective insertion methods.

She explained that Parsaoran Hutapea, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Temple and her PhD dissertation advisor, was instrumental in helping her determine this 3MT research topic and develop as a teacher while she was pursuing a PhD at Temple.  

“During the admission process, I found out that his lab’s research is based on mechanics, and that he also teaches statics and mechanics of materials,” said Kim. “I really wanted to join his lab so I could apply what I learned and loved the most to research. My research at Temple on mechanics of curved surgical needle in soft tissue builds directly on these same principles.”

She also recalled her first meeting with Ling Liu, an associate professor, in Liu’s course Mechanics of Solids at Temple, where she shared she wanted to become a professor. Liu would end up giving Kim an opportunity to teach a couple of lectures during her tenure as a graduate teaching assistant. She would later teach the fundamentals course Engineering Graphics: AutoCAD 2D and 3D as an adjunct instructor for a full academic year.  

In May, after she successfully defended her PhD dissertation, “Experimental and Computational Investigation of Curved Needle-Tissue Interaction under Linear and Curvilinear Base Manipulation,” she began applying for teaching positions across universities before ultimately securing the faculty position at Lehigh.  

“As a newly graduated PhD student, having that experience of teaching a full academic year at Temple was a big opportunity that I was really grateful for,” she said. “When I was interviewing for the faculty role, one of the search committee members told me that my application stood out because of that adjunct faculty experience, which really helped me land the job at Lehigh.”