Nationality South Korean Occupation Microbiologist McCune–Reischauer Yu Myonghui | Hangul 유명희 Name Myeong-Hee Yu Hanja 柳明姬 | |
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Born 5 September 1954 (age 69) ( 1954-09-05 ) Seoul Alma mater Seoul National University, University of California, Berkeley | ||
Revised Romanization Yu Myeonghui | ||
Myeong-Hee Yu (born 5 September 1954) is a South Korean microbiologist. She has also been a scientific adviser to the President of South Korea.
Biography
Yu was born in Seoul. She realized that she was interested in science and technology when she was in middle school. Yu's undergraduate work was conducted at Seoul National University and her doctorate was received from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. She later did postdoctoral fellow work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985.
Much of Yu's work has focused on unlocking the structure and folding of the protein alpha-1 antitrypsin, which is a serpin protein. She won a L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science in 1998 for this work. Yu and her research team have worked to discover what amino acids can suppress certain types of mutations, such as the tsf mutation which is a protein folding error. She has also patented the alpha-1 antritrypsin mutein with a disulfide bond and the method for preparing it along with her research group. Yu is the head of the 21st Century Frontier R&D Program at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology.
Her work has appeared in Nature, The Journal of Proteome Research, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the Journal of Molecular Biology, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the BMB Reports, and others. Her work is highly cited in the fields of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, immunology and microbiology.
In 2010, she was appointed to a new post in the South Korean government: senior officer for national future. Her responsibilities included overseeing government communications regarding science and technology and to help promote low-carbon and green technologies.