Song Bong-shik, a professor of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), participated in research at Kyoto University in Japan and assisted in realizing the world’s brightest semiconductor laser. In this research, brightness is defined as an optical power per unit area per unit solid angle. Achieving high brightness in semiconductor lasers is important for various applications, including directlaser processing and light detection for next-generation technology. Semiconductor lasers are semiconductor materials that emit laser light. They have the advantages of faster reaction rates, higher efficiency and a longer lifespan than solid or gas lasers. With these advantages, semiconductor lasers are now widely used as light sources. Despite these advantages, their brightness, the most important trait, is still one order of magnitude smaller than that of gas and solid-state lasers, and they often suffer from large beam divergence with strong asymmetry. To solve this problem, professor Susumu Noda’s team at Kyoto University has researched semiconductor lasers using nano-optic structures for more than 10 years, but has not implemented lasers with high power and brightness before. Professor Song, who participated in the research, then developed a technology suitable for nano-optical structures and implemented the world’s strongest and brightest semiconductor laser. This is meaningful in that it has provided a groundbreaking opportunity to enable nano-optics to be used in real life, such as multi-material three-dimensional (3D) printing, medical lasers, and future autonomous navigation sensors. Professor Song’s research was selected as the cover of the February issue of Nature Materials, an authoritative journal in the field of materials engineering