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Woo Jun (Chris) Shim

E-mail: woo.shim@uqconnect.edu.au

Woo Jun is currently pursuing PhD under supervision of Assoc. Prof. Mikael Boden (SCMB, UQ) and Dr. Nathan Palpant (IMB, UQ). His current research work centres around epigenetic regulation of genes that drive cell fate, which can be summarised in a threefold approach.

* Identifying key epigenetic features associated with regulation of cell identity genes.

* Understanding epigenetic gene regulation by integrating those epigenetic features.

* Devising computational methods to infer genetic regulators of cell identity.

Leveraging abundance of public datasets (e.g. from ROADMAP and ENCODE projects), Woo Jun studies histone modifications, open chromatin structures and non-coding RNAs across various cell contexts. Main question is how dynamics of these epigenetic features are functionally linked to expression of cell identity genes that drive an intended cell fate. If we can extract a set of epigenetic "rules" that governs cell identity, these would provide a useful reference to build a computational model to infer genetic regulators of cell identity.

Woo Jun has Master of Bioinformatics (UQ, 2016) and Bachelor degrees in Pharmacy (UQ, 2008) and Biomedical science (Adelaide, 2004). He is a registered pharmacist and worked in Australia for 7 years before coming back to Uni. With knowledge and experience in pharmacy and biology, Woo Jun is interested in applying bioinformatics methods to tackle broad biological and clinical problems (e.g. developmental biology, cancer pathology, personalised medicines).

Publications

Cell identity genes are frequently and distinctively associated with broad H3K27me3 domains across cell types. 2018. (manuscript in preparation).

Conferences

Sortilin localisation in the rat retina during early postnatal development. 29th Annual Meeting Australian Neuroscience Society, Canberra, Australia, Jan. 2009. Poster.

Awards

2017 SCMB Master of molecular biology and master of bioinformatics prize 2016 (UQ, SCMB), awarded to the graduating student with the highest GPA of their class.

2016 Winter research scholarship (UQ) to conduct a short research project under supervision of Dr. Kim-anh LeCao from Diamantina institute, UQ (now University of Melbourne)

2003 Golden key international honour society (Adelaide), awarded to enrolled students recognised to be among the top 15% of their class by the GPA.