I am currently a Basic Life Research Scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Sergiu P. Pașca in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where I have been developing human induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cells-derived 3D cellular models for studying aspects of human brain development and neuropsychiatric disease. During my doctoral work, I described the role of the small G protein ADP-ribosylation factor 6 (Arf6), a key regulator of neural membrane dynamics, and ACAP3, which is an Arf GTPase activating protein (GAP) that biochemically modulates the activity of Arf6 in the neurite morphogenesis of mouse hippocampal neurons (Biochem J. 2016) and neural migration in the developing cerebral cortex (Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2017). For my postdoctoral training, I am developing hiPS cells-derived 3D brain assembly technology to investigate the pathophysiology of genetic forms of neuropsychiatric disorders. I have recently developed a functional, disease-relevant neural circuits culture system that resembles the human developing cerebral cortex and striatum (Nature Biotechnology 2020, Nature Protocols 2022, Nature Biotechnology 2023), cortico-motor pathway (Cell 2020), and thalamocortical neural circuit (Kim and Miura, bioRxiv 2023). My academic training to date has provided a strong background in neurobiology, stem cell biology, and bioengineering with specific training in human stem cell-derived 3D culture, functional live cell imaging, optogenetics, and single-cell gene expression analysis, as well as mouse in utero surgery and histology experiments.
