SUMMARY
Jaeyun Sung, Ph.D., develops computational analytical approaches to understand the intricate relationship between commensal microbial organisms and human health. Of particular interest to Dr. Sung is characterizing the global interconnectivity within our body's microbial community, as well as identifying the primary biomolecular processes driving microbiome-associated chronic disease.
Dr. Sung's work is conducted primarily through network modeling and systems-level, integrative analyses of multiomics data from clinical samples. Ultimately, Dr. Sung aims to apply insights from his data-driven research to inspire future investigations into human microbiome biocomplexity and to create novel technologies that can lead to breakthroughs in improving human health.
Focus areas
- Integrative analysis of multiomics data to obtain insights into disease-related microbial compositional shifts
- Developing statistical inference and machine-learning tools to noninvasively monitor health and disease
- Network modeling of microbial community-scale metabolism to investigate global functional properties
Significance to patient care
The association between gut-related disorders and gut microbes is an intriguingly complex relationship, with no single microbe or function appearing to be causal. Instead, such disorders have been repeatedly linked to the overall gut ecology. Thus, progress in this direction will be contingent upon the maturation of the knowledge of global inner workings of a microbial community, and may be best studied by taking into account many different types of measurements.
Through a deeper understanding of the community-scale function of the gut microbiome, Dr. Sung aims to develop the conceptual framework necessary to design probiotic cocktails for gut-related disorders.