Young-Tae Chang

Young-Tae Chang (; born 1968) is a South Korean chemist. He is a professor of chemistry at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH).

Young-Tae Chang was born in Busan, South Korea in 1968. He obtained the Ph.D. degree in chemistry from POSTECH, working on the divergent synthesis of all regioisomers of myo-inositol phosphates, under guide of Prof. Sung-Kee Chung. Doctoral requirements at POSTECH require a student study at least three years, but Young-Tae finished in two, requiring his advisor to appeal for a revision of the rules which allowed him to receive his doctorate in February 1997. He then engaged in postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Peter G. Schultz at University of California, Berkeley and Scripps Research in 2000.

He was appointed assistant professor at New York University (NYU) in 2000 and promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2005. In September 2007, he moved to the National University of Singapore and the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium as a lab head at Biopolis. From 2017, he is a Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry, POSTECH and the Associate Director under Kim Kimoon at the Center for Self-assembly and Complexity at the Institute for Basic Science located on the POSTECH campus. He pioneered diversity-oriented fluorescence library approach (DOFLA), and developed embryonic stem cell probe CDy1, neuronal stem cell probe CDr3, and neron specific probe, NeuO. He also developed a method for background-free live cell imaging with tamed fluorescent probe. He also co-developed a super-photostable small-molecule fluorophore, Phoenix Fluor 555 (PF555), which enables long-term live-cell single-protein imaging. These days, he is focusing on developing fluorescent probes for the selective detection of senescent cells.

He is an editorial board member of MedChemComm and RSC Advances, Royal Society of Chemistry, Angewandte Chemie and American Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. He has published more than 400 scientific papers and 3 books resulting in more than 31,000 citations. Additionally, he has filed more than 60 patents.

Honors and awards 2023: Yoshida Prize, International Organic Chemistry Foundation 2022: Sang-Chul Shim Academic Award , Korean Chemical Society 2007: NUS Young Investigator Award 2005: Career Award, National Science Foundation