Vice-President, The Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST); Adviser, The Korean Federation of Women’s Science and Technology Associations (KOFWST), Korea. 

Co-chair, Plenary Panel 1: Pursuing Excellence in Research through Gendered Innovations

Myeong-Hee Yu is a principal research scientist at the Biomedical Research Institute of KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology). She received her undergraduate degree in Microbiology from Seoul National University and received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley (1981). After postdoctoral training at M.I.T., she returned to Korea and has spent 30 years working on the structure-function relationship of proteins. Dr Yu has been working on the folding and stability problem of a human plasma inhibitor protein, alpha-1-antitrypsin. She has shown that genetic emphysema, a human disorder resulting from a-1-antitrypsin deficiency, is associated with a hepatic block in the folding process. 

Since July 2002 Dr Yu had been the Director of the Functional Proteomics Center, one of 21C Frontier R&D Initiatives of Ministry of Science and Technology, until she was appointed as Senior Secretary for the Future Strategy at the Presidential Office of Korea in July 2010. She had served the position till February 2013. She has earned numerous national and international awards including UNESCO-L’Oreal Award from UESCO (1998), Seoul City Cultural Award from Seoul City (2001), and Order of Science and Technology, Ungbi Medal, from Korean Government (2004). She has been a member of National Academy of Science and Technology since 2002.