Professor Heebeom Koo received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Seoul National University and earned his Ph.D. through interdisciplinary research integrating chemistry and life sciences, with a focus on gene therapy. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at the Biomedical Engineering Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), as well as at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA. During this period, he pursued advanced research in drug delivery systems, click chemistry, and real-time in vivo imaging technologies.
Based on these achievements, Professor Koo joined the College of Medicine at The Catholic University of Korea in 2016. Since then, he has published approximately 120 SCIE-indexed papers, with a total citation count exceeding 12,000. He was selected as an Outstanding Young Investigator by the National Research Foundation of Korea in August 2019 and was featured on the NRF website. In November 2022, he received the Amgen–Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) Life Science Award, which is granted annually to a single next-generation researcher in the field of biotechnology.
Professor Koo’s research focuses on the design and development of nanoparticles and hydrogels for drug and gene delivery, along with systematic validation of their therapeutic efficacy in cellular and animal models. He actively collaborates with multiple clinical departments, including cardiology, otolaryngology, and rheumatology, to translate his research findings into clinically relevant applications. Notably, he conducts comprehensive, end-to-end research spanning material synthesis and development, physicochemical and biological characterization, in vitro studies, and in vivo animal experiments, ensuring that developed materials demonstrate therapeutic efficacy in disease models.
In addition, Professor Koo is actively engaged in research on mRNA–lipid nanoparticle (mRNA-LNP) technologies, which were applied in the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines administered worldwide. Building on this platform, his current research extends beyond vaccines toward the development of next-generation mRNA- and gene-based therapeutics for a wide range of diseases.

Professor Tae-Yoon Park earned his B.S. (2005), M.S. (2007), and Ph.D. (2013) in Biotechnology from Yonsei University, where he developed therapeutic platforms involving T-cell differentiation, transcription factor modulation, and protein transduction technologies. He subsequently served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Yonsei University Institute of Life Science and Biotechnology and the BK21 Plus Program (2013–2017), establishing his expertise in immunology and cell-based therapeutics. From 2017 to 2020, he worked as a Research Associate in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and later as an Instructor and Assistant Neuroscientist (2020–2025), contributing centrally to the world’s first clinical transplantation of autologous iPSC-derived dopamine neurons (NEJM, 2020) and the development of TREG co-transplantation technology (Nature, 2023), both of which redefined the therapeutic landscape of Parkinson’s disease. In 2025, he joined The Catholic University of Korea as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Life Sciences, where he leads research on needle trauma–induced neuroinflammation, immune–cell microenvironmental modulation, and next-generation cell therapy platforms. His publication record exceeds a cumulative IF of 300, with papers in NEJM, Nature, Cell Stem Cell, Cell Research, and other leading journals. Professor Park is an active member of major scientific societies including AAI, ISSCR, ISCT, and SfN, and is the recipient of multiple honors such as the ISCT ESP Rookie of the Year, SfN Trainee Professional Development Award, AKN Junior Research Scientist Award, and the KSSCR/K-BioX Young Scientist Award(1st winner). He also holds multiple domestic and international patents related to transcription factor modulation and therapeutic ginsenoside derivatives, and continues to pursue clinically translatable strategies in immune-integrated regenerative medicine.