Background
For more than 12 years, Dr. Kim has been studying the status of pluripotency and reprogramming using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). As a postdoctoral fellow (2005-2011), her research focus was to study the status of pluripotency and the propensity of neural differentiation in more than 30 different hPSCs. This study allowed her to understand that all different hPSCs stand at a different stage of pluripotency, marked by the expression level of mir-371 cluster, which is significantly correlated with different levels of propensity toward neural differentiation, and even to a final neuronal differentiation such as dopaminergic neurons (Kim et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2011).
With extensive experience in postdoctoral training period, she became a Director of Stem Cell Core Facility at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2011-2016), where she has supported stem cell research community inside and outside of Johns Hopkins, by sharing her expertise and techniques such as patient-specific hiPSC generation, direct differentiation, genetic modification of hPSC, and one-to-one training.
Now she began a new career as an independent PI with her own laboratory since February 2017.