Woong Y Hwang

I was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea until I was fifteen. In the late 1990’s, Korea’s economy faced major financial crises, which greatly impacted my family both financially and emotionally. However, my mother saw an opportunity to work as a nurse in the United States, and despite the language barrier, she received the sponsorship and the permanent residency for my family. I am grateful for my parents’ sacrificial love and the opportunity to study in the US.

After graduating from the University of Rochester, I joined Randall Peterson’s lab at Harvard University as a full-time research associate during which I conducted independent research on genomic editing tool development. My work demonstrated for the first time that the bacterial immune system called CRISPR/Cas9 can be utilized to modify any gene of interest in a whole living organism. My research resulted in a first author publication in Nature Biotechnology and a two-method paper to share this platform with other scientists.

My current research at Yale focuses on unraveling the nuclear transport mechanism of beta-catenin in canonical Wnt signaling that affects heart development as well as numerous cancers. As a physician-scientist in training, I want to capitalize on the unique opportunity to advance personalized medicine by investigating patient-driven translation research.

Fun facts about me: I can speak a little bit of American Sign Language and you may see me walking on the street and signing words (i am not a weirdo. I am just practicing my signing skills :)