Research Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2019-2021)
    Department of Nutrition

PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2014-2018)
  Program in Human Nutrition, Department of International Health
  Phi Beta Kappa
  Delta Omega

MS,  Ewha Womans University (2010-2012)
  Department of Nutritional Science and Food Management

BS,   Ewha Womans University (2006-2010)
  Department of Foods and Nutrition

Director, Sungkyunkwan University (2023-Present)
    Food Clinical Research Center, College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering

Assistant Professor, Sungkyunkwan University (2022-Present)
  Department of Food Science and Biotechnology, College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering
  Department of Clinical Research Design and Evaluation, Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences and Technology
  Department of MetaBioHealth, SKKU Institute for Convergence

Research Collaborator, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2022-Present)
Department of Nutrition

Assistant Investigator, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012-2014)
Division of Epidemiology and Health Index, Center for Genome Science, Korean National Institute of Health

I am a nutritional epidemiologist with specialized training and expertise in cancer prevention. Building upon my prior research experience centered around maternal, child and adolescent nutrition and global health, I have committed to elucidating early life or life course dietary and lifestyle risk factors for gastrointestinal malignancies. I have extensive research experience with large-scale data generated from diverse study designs, including but not limited to birth cohorts, randomized controlled trials and the Harvard cohorts — Nurses’ Health Study I, II and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. I approach cancer prevention and public health research with a life course lens that emphasizes the need for a novel understanding of etiologic clues and thus development of effective prevention and intervention strategies.

My long-term goal is to integrate nutrition, epidemiology, biostatistics and public health to impact the food and lifestyle choices millions of people make every day, which I believe can contribute to “protecting health, saving lives, opening a better future”. With this overarching aim, my current research pertains to 1) identifying adolescent and earlier-life dietary and lifestyle risk factors for colorectal cancer; and 2) deciphering the etiology of early-onset colorectal cancer, with a special emphasis on diet quality, alcohol, sugar-sweetened beverages, metabolic syndrome and healthy lifestyle indexes.

Along my academic journey towards cancer prevention, having nutritional epidemiology as the scientific underpinning, I am confident I will be committed to excellence as an educator and mentor to 1) advance the body of knowledge in this discipline by generating scientifically rigorous evidence with my research group; 2) teach and mentor the next generation of nutrition and public health professionals; and 3) translate these novel findings into action to help inform public health policies, guidelines and strategies that can ultimately contribute to cancer prevention and public health promotion, today, tomorrow and for generations to come.