FASEB Fellows for the Future

MyeongJin Yi, PhD

MyeongJin Yi has academic background in chemistry, toxicology, pharmacology, endocrinology, and reproductive biology. Yi began her academic career at Inje University, South Korea, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2011 and a master’s in 2013. Her master’s research was funded by the Inje Global Leader Scholarship and Brain Korea 21, one of the most significant graduate scholarships supported by the Ministry of Education in South Korea. During the master’s course, her research focused on developing novel anticancer agents. Yi was a teaching assistant in the experimental courses of “Quantitative Analysis” and “Biochemistry” for four semesters. 

She received the Grand Prize in the 2012 9th English Oral Presentation Competition of Thesis among all graduate school students, published one first-author and two co-author peer-reviewed articles, and received three patents as a co-inventor. In 2017, Yi received a doctorate in pharmacology from Inje University College of Medicine. Her doctorate program was supported by Inje Global Leader and Special Study Scholarships and Medical Research Center, funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea. During the doctorate program, she investigated the functional studies of genetic markers for diseases or differential xenobiotic metabolism based on ethnic- and population-specific. She served as the student representative in the Department of Pharmacology for three years and organized paper/grant writing workshops by inviting scientists or alums. 

Yi’s doctorate research was recognized at the 2017 69th Annual Meeting of the Korean Society of Pharmacology and won the third prize in the Inje Academic Awards awarded by the Inje University Graduate School office among all students who graduated in 2017. Yi published two as the first author, one as the co-first author, and three as a co-author peer-reviewed paper. Before completing the final dissertation, she joined Masahiko Negishi’s lab. She was awarded a predoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a grad school student in April 2017, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in November 2017. In the first postdoc training in Negishi’s lab, she focused on nuclear receptors and gene regulation responding to xenobiotics. Since 2021, Yi has joined Francesco DeMayo’s lab, and she investigates vitamin D’s role in female reproductive health, which highly correlates to socioeconomic levels and health disparities. During her postdoc training, Yi’s investigation has been recognized and received many awards, such as the 2021 Vitamin D Workshop Keystone Symposia, the 2022 Fellows Award for Research Excellence in NIH, and the 2023 31st TCRB Oral Presentation. Yi published two as the first author, three as a co-author of peer-reviewed papers, and the corresponding author of two book chapters. 

In addition to her research, Yi has volunteered for multiple outreaches, including a role as a regional institutes’ guide, school instructor, or diversity program facilitator, and she serves as a review editor in Frontiers in Pharmacology and Frontiers in Genetics.

FASEB Member Society: Society for the Study of Reproduction