Eui-Cheol Shin

Eui-Cheol Shin (; born August 29, 1971) is a South Korean medical immunologist, academic, and author. He is a professor at the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and director of The Center for Viral Immunology at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), a Korean government-funded research institute.

Shin's research focus lies in the field of medical immunology with a particular focus on T cell responses to viral infection and cancer and T cell-mediated immunopathogenesis.

Shin is a Fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. He is Deputy Editor of Immune Network.

Education Shin completed his Doctor of Medicine from Yonsei University College of Medicine in 1996. He then pursued a Master's degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the same university and completed it in 1998. He completed his PHD in Microbiology and Immunology from the Yonsei University College of Medicine in 2001. This study demonstrated for that bystander T cells can be a cause of host injury in human viral infection. In subsequent studies, he characterized IL-15-responsive bystander T cells in the liver microenvironment. In addition, he revealed a mechanism of IL-15 production from epithelial cells and found CD5 as a major negative regulator of IL-15-induced T cell proliferation. His theory about bystander T cell activation has been highlighted as an important pathological mechanism in human viral disease.

Immune responses in COVID-19 During the COVID-19 pandemic, Shin studied immune responses to COVID-19. First, he revealed a mechanism of hyper-inflammation in patients with severe COVID-19 by performing single-cell RNA-seq analysis. In his study, he reported a paradoxical role of type I IFNs in exacerbating inflammation in COVID-19 patients. He also performed a detailed characterization of SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells, revealing that despite expressing PD-1, they are functionally active and not exhausted. These findings corrected the misinformation that had been previously reported during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was one of the first studies that detected SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells using MHC class I multimers. In addition, he demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell memory is sustained for a long period after recovery from COVID-19 with the successful development of stem cell-like memory T cells. Moreover, he showed that memory T cells elicited by COVID-19 mRNA vaccination substantially respond to the Omicron variant. On the basis of his findings, he proposed T cell-oriented strategies for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Awards and honors 2016: GSK Academic Award, The Korean Association for the Study of the Liver 2017: Hantan Award, The Korea Society of Virology 2018: KAI-Genexine Award, The Korean Association of Immunologists 2019: Yongwoon Grand Prize in Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine & Yongwoon Foundation 2022: Asan Award in Medicine, Asan Foundation 2023: Asian Scientist 100, Asian Scientist