The Team
Our team is made up of passionate scientists with diverse backgrounds and expertise, from cell biology to bioengineering. We believe that collaboration and teamwork is essential to making breakthroughs in stem cell research, and we work closely together to support each other's projects and share our knowledge and ideas.
Thank you for visiting our team page, and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or are interested in learning more about our work.
Kitai Kim, Ph.D.
Center Director
Dr. Kim's research focuses on the role that epigenetic regulation plays in pluripotency and cancer.
Hyokyeong Cha, Ph.D.
Manager
Lead Research Associate on
Stem Cell Biology
HyoKyeong Cha earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Korea University. The focus of her research has been to understand neurodegenerative disease and mood disorder using mouse models and human iPSCs. After earning her PhD, she became intrigued in the possibility of large-scale biological datasets, and she worked on discovering protein panels resistant to chemotherapy drugs in breast cancer through proteomics and bioinformatics at Seoul National University Hospital. Recently, her priority research goal has been to utilize large-scale biological data sets to find clues and integrate stem cell and genome engineering technologies to improve the biological understanding and clinical application of human diseases.
HyoKyeong joined the team as one of the founding members to manage stem cell activities of the Center.
Deniz Ata, Ph.D.
Manager
Lead Research Associate on
Genome Engineering
Deniz received his BSc in Biology from the Istanbul University. Deniz obtained his PhD from the Koç University in the lab of Dr. Tamer Onder. His PhD work focused on disease modelling of neurodegenerative diseases using patient derived iPSCs and iMNs.
Deniz joined the team in 2022 as one of the founding members to manage genome engineering activities of the Center.
Ninj Byambasuren
Researcher - Stem Cell Biology
Ninj Byambasuren earned her B.S. degree in Bioengineering in 2018 from INHA University and her M.Eng. degree in Biomolecular Engineering in 2020 from Seoul National University. Her master's study was focusing on CRISPR-mediated activation systems and bone regeneration.
After graduation, Ninj worked at Celemics, South Korea as an NGS technical specialist for two years and as a healthcare and medical science-related project manager at Intralink, Britain for a year.
Jong-Jin 'James' Kim
Researcher - Genome Engineering
Jong-Jin received his BS in Microbiology & Molecular biology from CNU. Jong-Jin Kim studied in the laboratory of Dr. Mi-Young Son at the University of Science and Technology and received an MS. Jong-Jin Kim's research focuses on the application of human intestinal organoids derived from hESC and iPSC, the homeostasis mechanism of human intestinal stem cells, and the microbiome using human intestinal organoids.