Faculty Spotlight: Ohyun Kwon

Posted on

Kwon 0

The department would like to congratulate Professor Ohyun Kwon, who joined Professor Xiangfeng Duan and Professor Neil Garg in their promotions to the rank of full professor this month.

The rank of (Full) Professor is the highest rank that a professor can achieve (other than in a named or administrative position) and is conferred upon sustained and distinguished track record of scholarly achievement within one’s university and academic discipline.  With this in mind, we will be spotlighting each of the three recently promoted faculty members over the next three weeks, starting with Professor Ohyun Kwon.

Ohyun Kwon received her B.S. (1991) and M.S. (1993) from Seoul National University in South Korea. In 1993, she came to the U.S. to pursue her Ph.D. (1998) from Columbia University under the guidance of S. J. Danishefsky. Her thesis work involved the synthesis of biologically significant glycolipid, asialo GM1 and Globo-H human breast tumor antigen molecule, as well as complex phomoidride terpenoids, CP-225,917 and CP-263,114. She then went to Harvard University as a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Fellow to study chemical genetics in S. L. Schreiber’s lab. There, she completed a diversity-oriented combinatorial synthesis (DOS) of a library of muticyclic compounds, as well as a library of macrocycles. Kwon joined the faculty as an assistant professor at UCLA in 2001. She has been a member of the Molecular Biology Institute (MBI) and UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC) since 2005.  Some of her honors include the 2003 Amgen Young Investigator’s Award and the 2005 Thieme Journal Award (Synthesis and Synlett). 

322 20092large2007large
Professor Ohyun Kwon (Top Left) and photos with her group members (Top Right & Bottom)

Professor Kwon’s research revolves around the development of new synthetic methodologies, target-oriented synthesis (TOS) of natural products, and diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) of small molecule probes for chemical biological applications. The methodology research involves phosphine catalysis, the development of novel chiral phosphines, asymmetric catalysis, and pericyclic reactions of nitrodienes.

Kwon Graphics02
Research images from the Kwon Group

To discover more about Professor Kwon and her research, please visit her research group webpage.