About Jihae Sophia Lee

What paths are our brain cells going, and what makes them get lost from the “typical” journey, causing numerous neurological conditions?

Hello, my name is Jihae Sophia Lee, a bioinformatician at Korea University.
I believe we are a symphony of cell states, and it fascinates me, as a single-cell researcher, how all these cells act as a whole to create me, you, and our brain! I believe that understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the cells will lead us to understand the whole organ, the connectome, and related disorders.
Researchers have found risk genes through GWAS, and are further exploring their cell type-specific functions by single-cell omics. However, we find some genes in common across the disorders, with different cell type specificity. My current question is,
1) How do particular risk genes happen to have different cellular phenotypes across disorders?
2) What are the disease-specific cellular states and cell-cell interactions caused by this?
I aim to utilize single-cell omics, isoforms, machine learning, and human-derived stem cells to understand these.

Introducing me, I am an intersection of a lot of things.

• Being a bioinformatician means you are in between Biology and Computer Science
  (which are my two undergraduate majors..)
• I have both Brazilian and Korean nationality
  (feijoada and kimchi are both my soul foods!! Yum)
• I just love to be with people, nature, and animals
  (especially dogs, the white dog among my pictures is called Pong).
  

I want to bring this love and passion to my research.
Please stay tuned for any updates about my journey!