Kim Ho Min

Kim Ho Min is a biologist and professor in both the Graduate School of Medical Science & Engineering and the Department of Biological Science of KAIST. He was also the chief investigator of the Protein Communication Group in the Center for Biomolecular and Cellular Structure in the Institute for Basic Science in Daejeon from 2018. As part of the World Research Hub Initiative, he was a visiting professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Education Kim's formal study of science started at and Kyeongbuk Science High School in 1993. Finishing high school in two years, he went to the Department of Biological Science in KAIST, where he completed his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and doctorate. His advisors were Yoo Ook-Joon and Lee Jie-Oh, the former of which paid for Kim's doctoral studies.

Career He completed three postdoctoral fellows with the first two occurring at KAIST. From 2005, he worked in the Biomedical Research Center under Professor Yoo Ook Joon and then in the Department of Chemistry under Professor Lee Jie-oh. Moving to the US, his final postdoctoral fellowship was in the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco under Professor Cheng Yifan. In 2011, he returned to Korea to set up the Disease Molecule Biochemistry Lab in the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering (GSMSE) of KAIST. In GSMSE, he started as an assistant professor and later became an associate professor. He has also worked as an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Science and KI for Biocentury, both in KAIST.

In December 2018, he was selected to the chief investigator of the Protein Communication Group in the new Center for Biomolecular and Cellular Structure in the headquarters of the Institute for Basic Science. His group utilized structural biology techniques and biochemical and cell-biological approaches to research molecular mechanisms of various protein complexes related to immune response and synaptogenesis. The four core facilities in his research group were the Protein Expression Core, High-performance Cryo-EM Core, Protein Crystallization Core, and Computing core for Cryo-EM Image Processing.

Awards and honors 2018: National R&D Excellence 100, Ministry of Science and ICT 2018: Asan Award in Medicine for Young Medical Scientists, Asan Foundation 2018: Young Scientist Award, Korean Academy of Science and Technology 2017: KAIST Top 10 Representative Researches Award, KAIST 2017: Award for Academic Excellence, KAIST 2015: Ewon Assistant Professor, KAIST 2009: Agarwal Award, BMRC, KAIST 2007: Young Scientist Award, Ministry of Science and Technology

Selected publications