Tae Seok Moon

Tae Seok Moon is an EBRC (Engineering Biology Research Consortium) council member and a SynBYSS (Synthetic Biology Young Speaker Series) chair. He has expertise in systems and synthetic biology. He aims to solve global agricultural, environmental, manufacturing, and health problems through engineering biology. His research projects have been supported by Gates Foundation, AIChE, and 13 governmental funding agencies (26 external grants), and he has secured >$10M ($38M for the entire teams since 7/1/2012). These projects and his prior research efforts have resulted in 89 publications (78 as the PI), 167 invited talks, 170 contributed conference presentations, and 10 patents. His achievements have also been recognized with many awards, including a Langer Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence, a B&B Daniel I.C. Wang Award, an NSF CAREER award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a John C. Sluder Fellowship (MIT), an ILJU Foundation Award, an LG Chemical Fellowship, and the SNU President Prize.

He is deeply committed to spending the time required to promote the career development of his advisees and young researchers in the world. He has advised 115 young researchers who are diverse in race, gender, and nationality since 2012, including 22 students in other labs as a committee member, 29 undergrad researchers, 6 international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition teams (not counted toward 115), 31 grad rotation students (excluding ones who joined his lab permanently), 18 PhD students (8 students graduated), 3 MS students (funded by him), 4 technicians, and 8 postdoctoral researchers. Among these 29 undergrad researchers, 12 students chose to pursue grad studies in STEM. Many lab members have received fellowships & awards for their research, and lab alumni are contributing to society in universities, national labs, and industries (e.g., one developed the Pfizer COVID vaccine). In addition, teaching kits have been developed and distributed to more than 40 high school science teachers and hundreds of K-12 students, broadening impacts on STEM education.

He has been an active member of the global community of researchers who work in the fields of chemical engineering and bioengineering. He has actively participated in organizing many international conferences as a conference co-chair or organizer. He has also served as a reviewer, an editor-in-chief (New Biotechnology), an associate editor (8 journals), or an editorial board member (6 journals) for >50 journals, including Nature/Science/Cell journals, Nucleic Acids Res., and PNAS. Notably, his global leadership efforts include 1) his activity and role at EBRC as a Council Member to provide the vision to address national and global needs through synthetic biology and 2) his service to SynBYSS as the Founding Chair to provide a weekly, virtual, and multi-year forum where a global thought leader gives an opening 5 min talk, followed by a 45 min, rising star’s talk, for >1,000 global audiences.

Update on 12/22/2023