Activities

After skipping last year, I was delighted to attend the Evolution Meeting 2025, where I reconnected with colleagues and friends in the academic community. The opportunity to exchange ideas, discuss research, and meet new scholars was both inspiring and rewarding. I presented a poster on landscape pangenomics of the Montezuma quail, and I was thrilled by the genuine interest and engaging conversations it sparked. Overall, the meeting was a joyful reminder of the collaborative and dynamic spirit that drives evolutionary science.

Jun 20-24 2025

My first experience of AGA Presidential Symposium was very nice! In this smaller setting, I could meet with many prominent and rising researchers and shared great ideas. Fortunately, my research poster (about using genomic diversity in conservation assessment) was selected to present at this meeting with the theme of "Genomic Technologies and the Future of Conservation". My travel was supported by Purdue Graduate Student Government and Purdue Institute for Sustainable Future.

Oct 6-9 2024

It was a Midwest Pop Gen meeting after a year of break since 2021. This time the meeting was held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where I was very much curious about (both the campus and the city). I presented my poster about conceptual short-read-based pangenome pipeline and the travel was supported by Purdue Graduate Student Government.

Aug 4-5 2023

I traveled to Seattle, WA for the University of Washington's 28th Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics where I have learned applications of population genetics and statistical genetics from Drs. Ryan Hernandez, Jerome Goudet, and Bruce Weir. I was introduced to many new concepts, including local ancestral recombination graph and selection scans. It was a learningful experience in the beautiful city! And huge thanks to UW Biostatistics for supporting my travel!

Jul 12-19 2023

I attended a satellite meeting of Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution which focused on the Molecular Evolution in Small Populations. This small-setting meeting was a refreshing opportunity for me to gather and regather with people interested in small populations like me. A lot of cool research is going on around the world! Another intriguing point of this meeting was its venue, Princeton University - the first Ivy League university I have visited.

Jun 28-30 2023

I presented my first talk about using genomic diversity as a key conservation metric in Evolution 2023. It was an honorable moment to have that many audience. Even some people recognized me at another meeting! This research topic should be hotter than I have expected. Hope to present more in a paper, soon. Thanks much to Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future for supporting my travel.

Jun 21-25 2023

I attended the SLiM (forward-time genomic simulation software) workshop held at the University of New Mexico. It was a five-day intensive workshop to learn from the software's basic structure to practical applications. The software itself is surprisingly versatile and I do not doubt that this learning experience will help me a lot in the future for my last dissertation chapter.

Jun 16-20 2023

I presented my recent research of using genomics for conservation in Evolution 2022, the annual joint meeting of Society for the Study of Evolution, Society of Systematic Biologists, and American Society of Naturalists. This was my first big conference in the USA and was super fascinating with lots and lots of eye-catching presentations. I talked a lot, wrote a lot, and learned a lot. Especially, I met quite many new friends there! 

Jun 24-28 2022

At the University of Idaho, there was the Synthesis meeting of Distributed Graduate Seminar - Landscape Genetics Course that I took during the Spring 2022. This meeting is to develop each team's practical project into a publication level and to gather the course participants (host faculties, group leaders, and students) together. As it was a global online course organized by real experts of their own topic, I could learn all about landscape genetics from the basic to the applications. I definitely recommend this course to other who have the same interests with me!

Jun 1-6 2022

I participated ConGen 2021 hosted by Drs. Gordon Luikart, Brian Hand, and many others in University of Montana. This is an overarching workshop dealing with most aspects of Conservation Genomics including, but not limited to, marker selection, effective population size, landscape genomics, genome assembly, and molecular coalescent theory with practical hands-on sessions using diverse bioinformatics pipelines. Also, the most impressive thing of this workshop is that the instructors are the "real" experts of each area who developed important theories, commonly used programs, and conservation strategies. I enjoyed this very much!

Sep 6-17 2021

I joined 2021's Midwest Population Genetics Meeting held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (which is my first academic meeting in the USA!). What a beautiful campus! I met many great researchers, learned a lot about trendy population genetic studies, and got fresh insights on my future research. Plus, kudos to my lab mate Andrew Mularo who won the best presentation award!

Aug 20-21 2021

I presented my research about the climate change impact of Kori salamander (Hynobius yangi) at the conference of The Korean Society of Climate Change Research.  For this research, I conducted species distribution modelling using MaxEnt and climate data. Two different time frame (2041-2060 and 2061-2080) and four different climate change scenarios (RCP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) were compared. The result indicated that suitable habitats of this salamander will decrease in the future and it will be exacerbated when the climate change is more intensive and the time passes. Surprisingly, for RCP 2.6 and 4.5 scenarios, the habitats bounced back after it had been reduced first.

Jun 17-18 2021

I presented my research of "Population Genetic Comparison of Urban- and Forest-surrounding populations of an Endangered Salamander" at the forum. The result supported my hypothesis that the peripheral populations of urban area showed lower signs of gene flow. This study was funded by Korea Safety Health Environment Foundation as a citizen science project. I collected and analyzed the genetic part and citizen scientists helped me collecting environmental data (e.g. water temperature of habitats).  

Nov 17 2020

I submitted a poster of my research that reviewed the taxonomic status of a controversial brown frog (Rana uenoi) using molecular systematic analyses. Using much more samples covering the species' whole distribution range, I tried to re-arrange its phylogenetic relationship with other close relatives and figure out its population genetic structure across the whole geographic extent. 

Oct 22-23 2020

I have received a grant for the first citizen science project in Korea (funded by Korea Safety Health Environment Foundation) with my research proposal "Population Genetic Impacts of Urbanization on Gori Salamander (Hynobius yangi). To conduct this research, I taught my team of citizen scientists, families of passionate children naturalists, the theoretical background of population genetics and ecological characteristics of Gori salamander. I simplified the complicated theory of population genetics to aid their comprehension. 

Jul 1 2020