Yong-su Jin

Biography

Yong-Su Jin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and a faculty member of the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB). He is a principal investigator of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), and is also a member of the Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research (CABER) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jin received B.S. (1996) and M. S. (1998, advisor: Prof. Jin-Ho Seo) degrees in Food Science and Technology from Seoul National University and received Ph. D. degree (2002, advisor: Prof. Thomas Jeffries) in Food Science and Bacteriology (minor) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing a post-doctoral training (2003-2005, advisor: Prof. Greg Stephanopoulos) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he served as an Assistant Professor (2006-2008) in the Department of Food Science and Biotechnology at the Sungkyunkwan University in Korea. Dr. Jin’s research is centered on metabolic engineering of microorganisms to produce biofuels and chemicals from renewable biomass. His research aims to identify, characterize, and engineer beneficial genetic perturbations eliciting rapid and efficient production of target products, such as biofuels, nutraceuticals, and food ingredients. In addition, his group performs food safety related research: rapid methods for food pathogen detection, elucidation of bactericidal mechanisms by antimicrobial compounds, and investigation of cellular toxicity caused by nanomaterials. Dr. Jin was a Faculty Fellow of National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) for 2009-2010 and received the ACES College Faculty Awards for Excellence in Research.

Research Interest

Metabolic engineering, which draws upon the key engineering principles of integration and quantification, is a platform technology that provides solutions to various biological problems in the context of systems and synthetic biology. In particular, we are interested in developing and applying systematic and combinatorial methods for strain improvement for the production of fuels, chemicals, and nutraceuticals. Also, we would like to extend these methods for studying fundamental biology problems, such as aging and stress response. The overall goals of our research are (1) to develop useful/efficient computational and experimental tools for the dissection of complex metabolic networks in microbial cells, and (2) to create optimal strains for biotechnological processes using these developed tools. Probing, characterizing, and engineering cellular state through systems and synthetic biology; Metabolic engineering for production of value added products (fuels, chemicals, and nutraceuticals)