UNIST Students Honored with 2022 Asan Foundation Scholarship

Two UNIST graduate students have been awarded the prestigious 2022 Asan Foundation Medical Bioscience Scholarship, an annual award given to the nation’s top graduate students in medical bioscience.

The Asan Foundation Medical Bioscience Scholarship is a new support program, established in 2017 by the Asan Foundation. The scholarship is designed to nurture excellent human resources to lead the medical bioscience field of Korea. It offers students a range of financial assistance and encourages a culture of sharing in these challenging economic times.

This year, over 50 graduate students, including Yujin Kang (Advisor: Professor Jayil Lee, Department of Biological Sciences) and Wonwoo Jeong (Advisor: Professor Hyun-Wook Kang, Department of Biomedical Engineering) were recognized for their scholastic achievements and university accomplishments. These recipients have been presented with scholarship certificates, along with KRW 20 million in funding per year for up to four years.

This award has been given to Yujin Kang in recognition of her research work regarding DNA damage and repair. Her research lies primarily in the areas of DNA damage repair in the context of chromatin. Many factors contribute to DNA damage, yet our body has the function of identifying and recovering them. However, failure of DNA repair mechanisms may lead to the formation of mutations, which could contribute to cancer progression. Therefore, researchers focus on better understanding the mechanisms of the DNA damage repair system.