Rate My Professor Jeeyun Chung

Jeeyun Chung is an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She began her academic career at Yonsei University in South Korea and completed her graduate training under Pietro De Camilli at Yale University School of Medicine, focusing on phosphoinositides in generating subcellular membrane identity and their role in intracellular lipid distribution and organelle identity at membrane contact sites. Chung then pursued postdoctoral research in the joint laboratory of Tobias Walther and Robert V. Farese Jr. at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. During this time, she investigated lipid droplet biogenesis and mobilization, identifying key mechanisms such as the protein spartin as a lipophagy receptor that links lipid droplets to autophagy machinery, with implications for neuronal lipid metabolism and Troyer syndrome. She joined the Harvard faculty in 2023, establishing the Chung Lab to study cellular fat metabolism and inter-organelle communication.

Chung's laboratory addresses fundamental questions in lipid biology, including the regulatory mechanisms of autophagic lipid degradation (lipophagy), lipid trafficking and utilization at inter-organelle membrane contact sites, and the roles of lipophagy in neuronal lipid metabolism and neuropathology. Dysregulation of these pathways is linked to obesity, fatty liver disease, cancer, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders. Her research employs multidisciplinary approaches, including advanced microscopy, biochemistry, biophysics, and mass spectrometry-based analytics. Key publications include "The Troyer syndrome protein spartin mediates selective autophagy of lipid droplets" (Nature Cell Biology, 2023), "LDAF1 and seipin form a lipid droplet assembly complex" (Developmental Cell, 2019), "PI4P/phosphatidylserine countertransport at ORP5- and ORP8-mediated ER-plasma membrane contacts" (Science, 2015), "Lipid droplet biogenesis" (Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, 2017), and "Mechanisms of lipid droplet degradation" (Current Opinion in Cell Biology, 2024). Chung has received the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience, the Charles H. Hood Foundation Child Health Research Award, and the Star-Friedman Challenge Award for Promising Scientific Research. She teaches MCB 127: Organelle Biology and Cellular Function.