Head of Laboratory
Minji Byun, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Minji Byun received her Bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences from POSTECH, Korea, and then moved to the US to pursue graduate studies. She did her thesis work on novel immune evasion mechanisms of cowpox virus in Washington University in St. Louis. Upon receiving her Ph.D. in immunology, she moved to New York City for postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University. There she identified and characterized rare human mutations underlying Kaposi sarcoma and viral myocarditis. After her postdoctoral training, she returned to Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine as faculty, and then recruited to Precision Immunology Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2016. She joined UCI in 2022 as an Assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.
Lab Members
Yuri Lee, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Yuri Lee received a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences from Kyung Hee University and a doctorate in Biomedical Sciences from Seoul National University, Korea. She did her thesis work on epigenetic regulation of skin aging. After receiving her PhD, she moved to the United States for her postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California, where she studied characterizing transcription factor target genes of cancer cells. After her postdoctoral training at USC, she joined BYUN lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
Mallory Stephens, B.S.
Associate Specialist
Bio coming soon
Yoshiko Takahashi, M.S.
Associate Specialist
Yoshiko Takahashi received her bachelor’s degree in Marine Biosciences and master’s degree in Marine Life Sciences at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology in Japan. Since then, she has worked as a researcher in both academia and industry with experiences in the fields of marine biology and regenerative medicine. She has extensive experience in stem cell research, including fish germ line stem cells and human pluripotent stem cells. She hopes to leverage her prior experiences to contribute to discoveries in the BYUN lab leading to the understanding of immune-mediated diseases.