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.
Hayley Fernandes, MSc
Researcher - Stem Cell Biology
Hayley received her BSc in Molecular Biology from the University of Aberdeen. She then received her MSc in Stem Cell Engineering for Regenerative Medicine from the University of Glasgow where she studied under Dr. Ana Da Silva Costa, focusing on different differentiation protocols from human induced pluripotent stem cells to cardiomyocytes and how their maturation status was affected.
Jong-Jin 'James' Kim, MSc
Researcher - Genome Engineering
James 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.