Senior Editor

Prof. Im received his Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science (2001, Rehovot, Israel) and completed postdoctoral training at the Harvard Medical School (2003, Boston, USA). He started his lab as an independent principal investigator at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) (2004-2014, Gwangju, Korea). Currently, he is a Professor at POSTECH, KOREA. He is the board Director of the Pharmabiotic Research Institute (PRI), President of the International Scientific Conference on Probiotics and Prebiotics (IPC), and Chairman of the organizing committee of FIMSA 2021 (Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania). Currently, he also serves as Associate Editors or Editorial Board Members in several journals such as Beneficial Microbes Frontiers in Immunology and Vaccines and others. Prof. Im received several awards such as CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowships, Cancer Research Institute (2001), Young Investigator Award (The Society of Biological Research (SBR),2003, USA), Top 100 achievements of national R&D (2011, Korean government), Academic Research Awards (2019, Life Science Award, Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology), KAI-Genexine Award (2020 Grand Achievement Awards). Prof. Im made outstanding contributions to immunology, in particular to the cellular and molecular mechanism of immune tolerance in health and disease. His research activities cover (1) the Role of transcription factors in immune regulation and tolerance (2) the Molecular mechanism of IL-10 gene regulation in immune cells (3) the Reprogramming of the immune system by rationally selected probiotic strains (4) the Identification of effector molecules and underlying mechanism of action of immune-regulatory probiotics (5) Development of microbiome therapeutics for allergy, autoimmunity, and cancer. He has published more than 140 scientific papers in high-impact journals such as Cell, Immunity, Science Immunology, Nature Communications, PNAS, and others.

Immune tolerance, Microbiome, Probiotics, Immune disorder, Probiotics, Live therapeutic products (LBP)