Seung Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to America at age three. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1981, then received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1985 and his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1992.

In 2011, Dr. Kim and members of his Stanford lab partnered with faculty at Exeter to engineer a science teaching model based on experimental biology. The team created a new science course that enabled 11th or 12th grade students to perform open-ended research using the fruit fly. This course has run continuously since 2012, and opened the exciting possibility of making novel scientific discoveries, and generating data and resources that can be published and used by practicing scientists. Since then, Dr. Kim and his team expanded this concept to over 20 schools in the U.K., Asia and North America, including at schools serving students under-represented in science. To foster that latter effort, he and his team founded ESN in 2022.