Catholic University Student Jiyoung Choi Selected as 2025 Graduate Presidential Science Scholar

Selected as a National Science Talent
for Outstanding Research Competence

The Catholic University announced on the 16th that Jiyoung Choi, an integrated master's and doctoral course student in the Department of Biomedical Science (supervised by Professor Daehoon Park), has been selected as a final recipient of the "2025 Graduate Presidential Science Scholarship."

Jiyoung Choi, Integrated Master's and Doctoral Course Student, Department of Biomedical Science, Catholic University. Catholic University

The Graduate Presidential Science Scholarship is a program newly established last year by the Ministry of Science and ICT to support domestic graduate students in science and engineering so that they can grow into world-class core science and technology talent. This year, 120 students were selected out of a total of 2,355 applicants, resulting in a high competition rate of 20 to 1. Selected scholars receive a certificate in the name of the President, as well as a scholarship of 1.5 million won per month for up to four semesters for master's students and 2 million won per month for up to eight semesters for doctoral students.

Jiyoung Choi is a member of the Neuro Medical Lab led by Professor Daehoon Park, focusing on elucidating the molecular biological mechanisms of the formation and regulation of synaptic vesicles, which are responsible for communication between nerve cells in the brain.

In particular, by applying the concept of liquid-liquid phase separation, which has recently garnered attention in the field of cell biology, she is precisely analyzing the interactions between proteins involved in synaptic vesicle clustering. Previously, as the first author of a review paper on "Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation at the Presynaptic Terminal of Neurons," she was featured on the cover of the prestigious journal in biochemistry and molecular biology, "Trends in Biochemical Sciences (IF=11.0)."

Additionally, she is comparing and analyzing, from the perspective of phase separation, how the formation and movement of ATG9 vesicles?another type of vesicle within synapses?differ from those of synaptic vesicles. She reported a short experimental paper on this topic in "Molecular Brain," and co-authored a review paper on "Functions of the Core Autophagy Protein ATG9 in Neuronal and Non-Neuronal Cells" with Professor Xuan Zhao’s research team at the University of Maine, which was published in the authoritative cell biology journal "Autophagy (IF=14.3)."

Jiyoung Choi stated, "This achievement was made possible thanks to my advisor's meticulous guidance, the cooperation of my lab colleagues, and ongoing academic exchanges with my collaborators. I hope to continue achieving meaningful results together and, by elucidating the fundamental mechanisms of synaptic function, lay the groundwork for the development of new treatments for neurological diseases."