menu

Report of The Fourth A3 Roundtable Meeting on Asia Chemical Probe Research Hub

Junhyeong Yim
Department of Biophysics and Chemical Biology, Seoul National University, Korea
 First of all, I would like to thank for giving this great opportunity for me to attend the 4th A3 Roundtable Meeting on Chemical Probe Research Hub held in Sendai, Japan from November 18th to 21st. It’s really grateful that I attended the A3 Roundtable Meeting 3 times in a row, “Hangzhou, China in 2017”, “Jeju, Korea in 2018”, and “Sendai, Japan in 2019”. Every year, I learned a lot about chemical biology and amazed by diversity and profoundness of this field. Also, many excellent talks given by global leading scientists inspired me every time to hit upon a bright idea.

 On the second day of the meeting, all of PhD and graduate students provided their presentations. We should serve as a chair of next speaker, and I think it was one of the most valuable experiences to be a chair of other speaker, which cannot be given to graduate students anywhere else. After that, I presented my research outcome about a small molecule that can ameliorate the symptom of Parkinson’s disease. After my presentation, some professors asked me about the chirality of our compound or enzyme kinetics induced by our compound. Unfortunately, I cannot clearly answer those questions, which made me feel bad. But this experience made me study not only biology, but also other areas including organic chemistry and biochemistry to be a true interdisciplinary researcher. This was another precious experience that present my research in front of global leading scientist and get in-depth discussion with them.

 Besides, this A3 Roundtable Meeting allowed me to meet new friends from Japan, China, and Korea. I’m really glad that I saw again Saki, who came to Jeju, Korea last year and Lei Gao, whom I met at Hangzhou, China two years ago. Four days were so short and flied like an arrow, but I can feel that we were all together and can remember all of our valuable talks and discussion. I hope that we can see each other again at the next meeting, other conferences or somewhere else.

 Lastly, I would appreciate to Prof. Minoru Ueda, his graduate students, and his secretary Junko, for organizing this wonderful meeting. Also, I’m sincerely thankful to chairman of China, Prof. Jianhua Qi, and my supervisor, Prof. Seung Bum Park for launching A3 meeting, and gave me an opportunity to attend this meeting. I wish this A3 meeting hold long last, and keep building a bridge for young scientists.