Lab Members

Bio: Amy is born and raised in Taiwan. She moved to the U.S. in 2013 and received her M.S. degree in Biomedical Science from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2015. While working with Dr. Roger Clem at Mount Sinai, she studied neuronal activity in the mouse fear memory circuit under the regulation of adrenergic signaling. She enrolled in the doctoral program at University of Texas Health San Antonio in 2016 and recently earned her PhD degree in Neuroscience studying under Dr. Jason Pugh. Her dissertation is focused on understanding how GABAergic modulation influences synaptic physiology in the mouse cerebellar cortex. She joined the Kim lab in 2022 and is interested in examining neuron-glia interactions under both physio- and pathophysiological states in the auditory brainstem.

Fun Fact: Amy is a Broadway musical buff and becomes a self-taught knitter/crochetier during quarantine.

Bio: Han-Gyu was born at countryside of South Korea, called Uljin located right near to East Sea, and raised the other countryside of South Korea. The environment surrounding inspired him about nature all the time, which is why he started his research life on Ecology and Evolution studying sticklebacks, a freshwater fish, at Yeungnam University. Using genetic tools and theory, such as population genetics, genomic, bioinformatics, Han-Gyu investigated microevolution of this small fish. After getting his master’s degree, he started his PhD focusing on the bioinformatics. Then, Han-Gyu got the opportunity to study connection microbiome and brain disorders in diabetic model in Singapore. Aside of this project, he was involved in other projects as well. Among them, his PhD thesis project focused on white matter abnormality at early phase of Alzheimer’s disease. After graduation, Han-Gyu worked at SungKyunKwan University as a postdoc. There, he studied toxic exosome communication between astrocyte and neuron. In the Kim Lab, his project is involved in identifying genetic property of SCN2A-expressing oligodendrocyte using single cell RNAseq and Patch-seq and investigating natural function of SCN2A-expressing oligodendrocyte on brain function using in vivo imaging.

Fun fact: Han-Gyu loves to sing, but claims he is not good at it. 

Bio: Jorge grew up in San Luis Potosi, Mexico before settling in Dallas, TX. He obtained his undergrad B.S. in Cell & Molecular Biology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2019. After undergrad, Jorge joined Dr. James Stockand lab at UTHSCSA as a research assistant where he got his first publication. The work focused on the Cisplatin effect on the ion channel ENaC in the kidney with a focus on renal salt wasting syndrome. Jorge then joined Dr. Glenn M. Toney’s lab in 2020 as a research assistant. He focused on in vivo surgeries studying nitric oxide levels in a sleep apnea mice model. Jorge got accepted to the Integrated Biomedical Science PhD program in the Fall of 2021 and later joined Dr. Kim’s lab in Spring of 2022 in the Physiology & Pharmacology Track. He is interested in learning the auditory system with a focus on neuronal connections and the effects on neurodegenerative diseases.  

Fun fact: Jorge is a Marine, loves hiking, and has a cat named Luna.