Hyongbum Henry Kim, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Pharmacology and Yonsei Lee Youn Jae Fellow at Yonsei University College of Medicine. He earned his M.D. from Yonsei University, where he also received a Ph.D. in nano-science and technology, did postdoctoral training at Emory and Tufts Universities, and held faculty appointments at CHA and Hanyang Universities before returning to Yonsei in 2015.

His central contribution has been to make genome editing quantitative and predictable. By measuring editing outcomes at tens of thousands of target sequences in parallel, his group generated datasets and deep learning models—among them DeepCpf1, DeepSpCas9, and DeepPrime—that allow a guide RNA and an editor to be chosen computationally rather than by trial and error. His group also mapped the comparative activities and specificities of Cas9 variants, compact Cas9 orthologs, base editors, and prime editing systems, and engineered editors with improved properties, including the high-fidelity, high-activity variant Sniper2L and prime editors enhanced by a Rad51 DNA-binding domain.

He has since turned these editors into instruments for human genetics. Using saturation base and prime editing, his group has assigned function to variants of uncertain significance across cancer genes, tyrosine kinase inhibitor resistance alleles, and every single-nucleotide variant of ATM. He has further shown that prime editing can correct mutations and phenotypes in adult mice with liver and eye diseases.

He chaired the Korean Association for Genome Editing and is a Full Member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.