Professor Young-Oh Kim received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Seoul National University, his M.S. from the University of Cincinnati, and his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington. After serving as a visiting scientist at the University of Washington and a research associate at NASA's Global Hydrology & Climate Center, he joined Seoul National University in 1999. He leads the Climate Change Adaptation for Water Resources Laboratory. He has chaired major national and international committees in hydrology and water-resources management and has served as Dean of the College of Engineering since 2024.

His research treats future water conditions probabilistically and connects uncertainty directly to real-world decision-making. He introduced ensemble streamflow forecasting in Korea and advanced forecasting systems by combining climate information with statistical post-processing. His work links probabilistic forecasts to reservoir-operation optimization, quantifies uncertainty throughout climate-impact assessment, and develops robust and adaptive water-resources strategies that remain effective under nonstationarity and uncertainty.