ChangHui Pak, Ph.D.
(Assistant professor in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology)
(she/her)
ChangHui received her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. from Emory University School of Medicine. During her graduate work with Drs. Anita Corbett and Ken Moberg, she studied how RNA processing affects normal neural function in humans and Drosophila. Then she moved to Stanford University School of Medicine to work with Dr. Thomas Sudhof (Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 2013) to study the molecular basis of synaptic function and dysfunction using human induced neuronal models of schizophrenia. She was supported by postdoctoral F32 NRSA from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and Katharine McCormick award (Stanford University). In 2018, she started a faculty position in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at UMass Amherst and is an active mentoring faculty member in Molecular & Cellular Biology Graduate Program, Neuroscience & Behavior Graduate Program, and Biotechnology Graduate Training Program (NIGMS T32).
Honors & Awards:
2022 Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award, Association of Korean Neuroscientists
2021 National Science Foundation UMass ADVANCE Faculty Fellow
2020 Early Career Reviewer, NIH Center for Scientific Review
2016-2017 Katharine McCormick Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University
2013-2016 Ruth L. Kirchstein National Research Service Award (F32 NRSA), NICHD
Teaching:
2019-present: Advanced Molecular Cell Biology (Biochem/MCB 642), UMass Amherst, co-instructor of record; Graduate level biochemistry/cell biology course, 25-35 students; offered annually in the Fall
2019-present: Advanced Biochemistry (Biochem 424), UMass Amherst, co-instructor of record; Undergraduate upper level biochemistry/cell biology course, 100 students; offered annually in the Spring
2022-present: CRISPR and genome engineering in iPSC research (Biochem 690B), UMass Amherst, instructor of record; Graduate level T32 training program core lab module, 8-12 students; offered annually
Professional service:
Ad-hoc reviewer for scientific journals including PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, Molecular Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, Science Advances, Science Signaling, Nature Communications, Nature Neuroscience and Molecular Autism
Guest editor for Journal of Molecular Biology (Elsevier), Special issue on “Organoids” in 2021-2022
Guest editor for Methods in Molecular Biology (Springer Nature), book series “Stem Cell Based Neural Model Systems for Neurological Disorders” in 2022-2023
Associate editor for Behavioral and Psychiatric Genetics section in Frontiers in Genetics, Special issue on “Stem cells and organoid models for complex psychiatric disorders” 2023-2024
Ad-hoc reviewer for NIH Special Emphasis Panels including Cellular and Molecular Biology of Complex Brain Disorders study section (Feb 2020, Feb 2021, June 2021, June 2022, June 2023).