John Chung
Title: Director of the Biomolecular NMR Facility.
Responsibilities: Facilitating scientists' experimental
research; keeping abreast of the latest developments in methodology
and envisioning ways to implement them on TSRI-specific projects;
going through the A-Z's of maintaining the spectrometers at
their peak performance.
Latest Challenge: Maintaining and operating the highest-field
NMR machine built to date, the 900 MHz (see
News&Views article).
Background: Born in Korea. Moved to the United States
when he was 11.
Education: B.S., University of California, Santa
Barbara; Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign;
postdoctoral research, Yale University. "I was drawn to NMR
early on. I've always been into tinkering and methodology."
Co-worker: Gerard Kroon, assistant manager of the
facility. "He's so patient, unlike me, and is a ton of help,"
says Chung. "He always has a smile on his face."
Best Part of the Job: "I work with the most expensive
toys in the world—applied to studying the most biologically
relevant systems. Part of my job is 'pushing the outside of
the envelope' of what is possible using these machines."
Immediate Family: Ruth, wife of 10 years, and five
kids—an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, a four-year-old,
and one-year-old twins. ("For exercise, I do 2 x 25-pound
baby curls.")
Extracurricular: "I used to teach bilingual Sunday
school at church; I've had to give that up to be there more
for my kids. I have begun digitizing our family genealogy
book that goes back 34 generations and at least 700 years,
into a web-interfaced database. When completed it will probably
be the most well-documented family tree out there."
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