by Victoria Pang ‘25
About Jennifer
Moving to the United States from Korea during adolescence, Jennifer Chun is now a senior at the University of Washington, pursuing a degree in biochemistry with a minor in chemistry. To Jennifer, her interest in pursuing drug development was inspired by her desire to help others. While she has debated pursuing other routes in healthcare, she ultimately decided to pursue research as it provides a more far-reaching, large-scale chance of helping the lives of multiple people at once. Successful biomedical research can also create lasting positive impacts, which Jennifer finds highly motivating.
Study Abroad Research
In her third year, Jennifer did a study-abroad program in South Korea, attending Seoul National University (SNU) for a year. Located in the heart of Seoul, SNU is a prestigious research university in South Korea. Fortunately, as a native Korean speaker, the language barrier was not too large. There, she cold emailed a professor who was doing chemistry and biochemistry research, hoping to get a response from professors whose work she found interesting.
Her first research experience at SNU was with Professor Seung Youn Hong in a synthetic organic chemistry and catalysis lab. For this research experience, she built upon principles she learned in her organic chemistry classes, developing a synthesis mechanism for inner-sphere electron-shuttling catalysis for challenging C(sp³)-N cross-coupling. Cross-coupling is the joining of two chemical molecule fragments using a metal catalyst, which Jennifer describes as challenging due to steric hinderance of tertiary N-alkylation. Geometric orientations and the properties of molecules in space are important in molecules, where even a slight deviation in spatial organization can change the properties of a molecule completely, making specialized synthesis mechanisms all the more necessary. In this experience, she applied and refined techniques she learned in her organic chemistry class like amide-coupling and gained hands-on experience with advanced instruments, such as glove box and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
The other research experience Jennifer participated in was within a chemical biology lab with Professor Seung Bum Park. She describes two different divisions in this lab—the “synthesis” team and the “biology” team. The synthesis team was responsible for synthesizing various chemical structures with biological significance, while the biology team focused on testing the synthesized compounds and putting them to the test in addition to pursuing other research topics in biomedicine. In the synthesis division, she helped develop a small molecule drug that focused on increasing cell stress signals known as stress granules. Stress granules are cytoplasmic, membraneless organelles that form when cells are stressed, helping the cell to survive adverse conditions. The increase of these stress granules could inhibit the replication of cells under stressful conditions, such as viral infections. She also conducted various bioassays to verify the functionality of these small molecules she synthesized. A facet of this laboratory that Jennifer found particularly interesting was that “it functioned like a miniature pharmaceutical company,” mirroring her own interest in working in the pharmaceutical industry.
Current Research at UW
After her study-abroad experience in Korea, she began conducting research with Professor David Baker at UW’s Institute of Protein Design as part of the JUPITER internship program. The lab of Prof. Baker, the recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, studies and develops software to design proteins, straddling the line between computational studies and conventional wet lab science. Using protein design software and tools such as Rosetta, Ligand MPNN, and RoseTTAFold, Jennifer currently focuses on protein design, specifically designing phosphorylation-inducible heterodimers using both computational and experimental approaches she designs possible phosphorylation inducible heterodimers. Phosphorylation is one of the most important processes in biology, essentially serving as an on-off button for many different processes, governing processes from metabolism to cell signaling. These designed heterodimers have a wide variety of potential applications, from biomaterials to drug delivery. The software tools allow her to adjust aspects of the protein sequences and predict their functionality. In the future, when the team has more solidified designs, they hope to synthesize these designed proteins in a wet lab setting, which would allow them to test whether the proteins work as expected or not.
While the Baker lab is rather large, Jennifer’s primary mentors are Dr. Kathryn Shelley, a postdoctoral researcher, and Cullen Demakis, a graduate student. Her mentors host weekly group meetings to review project progress, engaging in open discussions about new ideas and next steps. These meetings have been extremely important to her as it allows for her to discuss her weekly process and giving her input on how to proceed next. She also gave presentations on research papers relating to her work, giving the team potential foundations of what they could be working on. Being broken up into a smaller team also allowed her to foster meaningful relationships, making Jennifer truly feel like a part of the lab community, something she greatly values in research.
Jennifer’s Next Steps and Advice
While she has enjoyed research throughout her undergraduate career, her time at SNU has solidified her personal decision to pursue graduate study in Korea. Jennifer highly recommends the study-abroad experience, as she describes it as a “life-changing experience.” In Korea, she found a unique sense of community within the labs where she worked. The labs at SNU felt like a tight-knit community, creating an open space of intertwined mentorship, learning, and collaboration. She describes this culture to be deeply rooted in the concept of jeong (정), which encompasses feelings of empathy, affection, and closeness, which she vastly appreciated.
For students who wish to get into research, Jennifer recommends first finding an area of interest and then cold-emailing different professors. “Don’t be afraid to cold email,” says Jennifer, “many professors are sweet and nice.” She also notes that passion is important—showing genuine passion for the research during interviews can make a strong positive impression on impressions. On the other hand, for students already in research, she recommends reading research papers not only related to the immediate research they do, but also papers beyond their immediate research area to explore new topics and broaden their perspectives. Jennifer also stresses the importance of investing time wisely. “You can get burned out very easily,” she says. Not only does balancing life help prevent burnout, but it also gives the student enough energy to stay engaged and invested in their research.
Outside of her professors and mentors in all the labs she has been in, she also heavily appreciates her parents, who have been supportive about her decision to pursue biomedical research, as well as her friends, who have gone with her through highs and lows throughout university. Before solidifying her final choice in graduate education, she will be working at Pfizer as a Research and Development Intern during the summer after her graduation. While she is still determining her ultimate end goal after pursuing a postgraduate degree, she is currently considering going into the pharmaceutical industry to continue her passion in drug development and design.
To learn more about conducting undergraduate research at the University of Washington, explore the Department of Chemistry’s Undergraduate Research page, meet with an undergraduate adviser, visit the UW Office of Undergraduate Research, or reach out to Free Radicals, the undergraduate student club for chemistry and biochemistry majors.