Jonghak Yang

Education: MD Medicine

Location: Seoul, South Korea

Contact: jonghak.yang@bmsis.org

He is a medical student at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, whose work sits at the crossroads of immunology, aging biology, and space life sciences. As a Visiting Scholar at Blue Marble Space under the supervision of Dr. Fathi Karouia, he studies how stressors such as spaceflight, radiation, and mitochondrial dysfunction reshape the immune system and accelerate its aging. He is especially drawn to molecular “chronometers” — transcriptomic clocks that read biological age from gene expression — and has applied them to ask whether the thymus truly recovers after spaceflight. His current work explores how mitochondrial stress shapes trained immunity. Broadly, he is fascinated by how cells sense and remember stress, and how those insights might serve both human health on Earth and long-duration missions beyond it. He enjoys connecting ideas across disciplines.

Advisor(s): Dr. Fathi Karouia