Seongwoo Woo has a B.S. and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and he has gained a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M. His major interests are in energy systems such as HVAC and its heat transfer, optimal design and control of refrigerators, reliability design of mechanical components, and failure analysis of thermal components in marketplace using nondestructive methods such as scanning electron microscopy and X-ray. In particular, he has developed parametric accelerating life testing (ALT) as a new reliability methodology, which would determine if there is a design fault in a mechanical system that is subjected to repetitive stress. Using this parametric ALT, engineers can find the design faults before the product is launched and thus can avoid failures.

From 1992 to 1997, he worked in the Agency for Defense Development, Chinhae, South Korea, where he was the researcher in charge of the Development of Naval Weapon System. From 2000 to 2010, he worked asa senior reliability engineer in Side-by-Side Refrigerator Division, Digital Appliance, Samsung Electronics, where he focused on enhancing the lifetime of refrigerators using a parametric ALT. Now, he is working as a professor in the Mechanical Department, Ethiopian Technical University.