About
Kwanghun Chung completed his undergraduate studies at Seoul National University in 2005, majoring in Chemical and Biological Engineering. He then went to Georgia Institute of Technology and completed his thesis work in 2009 under the mentorship of Hang Lu. During his graduate research he developed automated and integrated microsystems for high-throughput imaging, molecular/behavioral phenotyping, and cell microsurgery of a broad range of living systems including mammalian cells, C. elegans, and Drosophila embryo. After completing collaborations stemming from his PhD work, he then joined Karl Deisseroth Lab at Stanford University for post-doctoral training in 2010. In his time in Karl Deisseroth Lab, he invented a novel technology termed CLARITY, which enables system-wide structural and molecular analysis of large-scale intact biological samples including rodent brains and human clinical samples. He was Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at Scientific Interface (BWF-CASI) Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2013, he joined MIT to start his own lab as an assistant professor of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the Department of Chemical Engineering. He is also a principal investigator of the Picower Institute of Learning and Memory.
Research
The Chung Lab is an interdisciplinary research team devoted to developing and applying novel technologies (e.g. CLARITY) for integrative and comprehensive understanding of large-scale complex biological systems. Specifically, we develop a host of methods that enable rapid extraction of system-wide structural, molecular, and genomic information from intact tissues. Furthermore, we combine these technologies with physiological and behavioral approaches to study function and dysfunction of mammalian brain as well as other organs. We hope that our developing technique will continue to provide unforeseen opportunities for deeper understanding of biological systems. Our mission is to empower the scientific community by openly sharing research outcomes and offering training courses to broadly and rapidly disseminate our technologies.
Publications
Sung-Yon Kim, Kwanghun Chung*, Karl Deisseroth* "Light microscopy mapping of connections in the intact brain", Trends in Cognitive Science, 2013. (co-correspondence) Kwanghun Chung*, Karl Deisseroth*, "CLARITY for mapping the nervous system", Nature methods, 2013, doi: 10.1038/nmeth.2481 (co-correspondence)
Kwanghun Chung, Jenelle Wallace, Sung-Yon Kim, Sandhiya Kalyanasundaram, Aaron Andalman, Tom J. Davidson, Kelly A. Zalocusky, Joanna Mattis, Sally Pak, Viviana Gradinaru, Hannah Bernstein, Julie Mirzabekov, Charu Ramakrishnan, and Karl Deisseroth, "Structural and molecular interrogation of intact biological systems", Nature, 2013, doi:10.1038/nature12107
Jitendra S Kanodia, Yoosik Kim, Raju Tomer, Zia Khan, Kwanghun Chung, John D. Storey, Hang Lu, Philipp Keller, and SY Shvartsman, "A computational statistics approach for estimating the spatial range of morphogen gradient", Development, 2011, 138, 4867-4874
Kwanghun Chung*, Mei Zhan*, Jagan Srinivasan, Paul Sternberg, Emily Gong, Frank Schroeder, and Hang Lu, "Microfluidic chamber arrays for whole-organism behavior-based chemical screening", Lab on a Chip, 2011, 11, 3689-3697
Kwanghun Chung*, Catherine A. Rivet*, Melissa Kemp, and Hang Lu, "Imaging single-cell signaling dynamics with a deterministic high-density single-cell trap array", Analytical Chemistry, 2011, 83, 7044-7052
Yoosik Kim, Maria Jose Andreu, Bomyi Lim, Kwanghun Chung, Mark Terayama, Gerardo Jimenez, Celeste A. Berg, Hang Lu and Stanislav Y Shvartsman, "Gene regulation by MARK substrate competition", Developmental Cell, 2011, 20, 880-887
Kwanghun Chung*, Yoosik Kim*, Jitendra S Kanodia, Emily Gong, SY Shvartsman, and Hang Lu, "A microfluidic array for large-scale ordering and orientation of embryos", Nature Methods, 2011, 8, 171-176 Matthew Crane, Kwanghun Chung, Jeffrey Stirman, and Hang Lu, "Microfludics-enabled phenotyping, imaging, and screening of multicellular organisms", Lab on a Chip, 2010, 21, 1509-17