After five years as a postdoctoral associate at the UF College of Dentistry, Hey-Min Kim, Ph.D., joined the Department of Oral Biology as a research assistant scientist in July.
Kim spent her first year as a postdoctoral associate working under UFCD researcher Sang-Joon Ahn, Ph.D., but has been conducting research under Interim Chair of the Department of Oral Biology Mary Ellen Davey, Ph.D., since 2017.
As a research assistant scientist in the Davey Laboratory, she is responsible for the planning and execution of experiments, and preparation of manuscripts and abstracts for data generated under her respective research projects. Kim also assists with the guidance of technical personnel and graduate students in the laboratory.
She is specifically working on two R01-funded projects, “Regulatory Mechanisms Controlling Expression of P. Gingivalis Surface Structures” and L-Arg Availability Affects the Physiological State of P. Gingivalis.”
Kim earned her bachelor’s degree in genetic engineering in 2008 from Sungkyunkwan
University in Korea, and went on to earn both her master’s degree and Ph.D. in biological sciences at Seoul National University in 2010 and 2015, respectively. She completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Biological Sciences at Seoul National University from 2015-16 before journeying to the United States and the University of Florida College of Dentistry in 2016.
While earning her Ph.D., she worked as both a general biology laboratory assistant and a microbial physiology lab assistant.
Her research interests include host-bacterial interactions, bacterial physiology and metabolism, bacterial pathogenesis and virulence factors, bacterial surface structures, and signal transduction systems and molecular interactions.