Professor Sun Choi at Pharmacy Department became the 1st winner of the Mogam Award
- Date2023.11.22
- 4258
Professor Choi won the 1st Mogam Award (Founder: MOGAM Institute for Biomedical Research) for her academic achievement in big data and AI-based drug discovery.
Professor Sun Choi at the Pharmacy Department became the first winner of the Mogam Award. The winner is selected by the Korean Society for Bioinformatics (KSBI).
The MOGAM Institute for Biomedical Research (MIBR) sponsored the foundation of the Mogam Award to recognize outstanding researchers in bioinformatics, especially in the drug discovery field. The MIBR is a non-profit research foundation established in 1984, with a sponsorship of GC Corp., aiming to obtain socially responsible profits from the development of biotechnology and create a stable and sustainable research environment by using the profits for the R&D. The MIBR is the first research institution in South Korea to be recognized by the former Ministry of Science and Technology, which is now the Ministry of Science and ICT, and designated as one of the WHO collaborating centers. The institute also accomplished remarkable feats in the history of the Korean pharmaceutical industry: the invention of the world’s first hemorrhagic fever vaccine, and the world’s second chickenpox vaccine. The KSBI was founded in 1998 and has been a venue for academic exchanges of bioinformatics experts in South Korea. The annual conference of the KSBI in 2023, BIOINFO 2023, was held in SONO Calm Yeosu from November 13th to 15th. The event was attended by more than 800 people.
Professor Sun Choi won the 1st Mogam Award for her academic achievement in big data and AI-based drug discovery. She has done multiple drug discovery technology transfers, filed a number of patent applications and registrations at home and abroad, and published more than 110 papers in globally high-impact journals, including Cell Metabolism, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, and Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Her papers were about as follows: innovative research introducing theoretical biophysical methods using molecular modeling in medicinal chemistry, unraveling three-dimensional structure, dynamics, multiscale simulation, and in vivo signaling mechanism of target proteins; development of antagonist-to-agonist ligand; construction and utilization of big-data and AI-based drug discovery platform. She elevated computer-aided drug design in South Korea to the global level, conducted multiple interdisciplinary research projects with distinguished organizations in South Korea and many other countries, including the U.S., China, and Japan, and has collaborated with global companies like Microsoft. She also received multiple awards, including the Presidential Achievement Award on the 52nd Science Day for promoting science and technology, Nogam Academic Award and Cheon Munwu Medicinal Chemistry Academic Award from the Pharmaceutical Society Of Korea, TCI-SEJIN CI Academic Award, and Pharmaron Lectureship Award from Pharmaron, a global R&D service provider, in addition to being selected as a Peng Cheng Scholar by Shenzhen, a pioneer city of China’s fourth industrial revolution.
Professor Choi is currently a chair of the Biomedicine Committee and lay member of the Bio Special Committee at the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology, a Korean delegate of the Asia Biophysics Association, an associate editor of the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, and the director of the Global AI Drug Discovery Center at Ewha Womans University. She was also a lay member of the National Supercomputing Center, president of the Korean Society for Protein Science, president of the Medicinal Chemistry branch at the Pharmaceutical Society of Korea, vice president of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics, vice president of the Korean Society of Organic Synthesis, an expert member of Division of Medical Science at the National Research Foundation, and chair of the Scientific Program Committee for AIMECS 2023 by the Asian Federation for Medicinal Chemistry.
The awarding ceremony of the Mogam Award took place in Yeosu, on the second day of the 2023 Annual Conference of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics (November 14th, Tue).