Dr. Jonghye Woo, an MCL alumnus, was recently promoted to Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Congratulations!

Dr. Woo graduated from MCL in 2009. He became a research associate at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2010 and joined University of Maryland and John Hopkins University as post-doc in 2012. After that he became a faculty member at MGH/Harvard. His research interests lie in medical imaging, particularly multimodal MRI analysis of speech, cardiac/tongue motion modeling and analysis, etc.

Talking about his career path, he thinks it was deeply influenced by his PhD journey, during which he was advised by Prof. Kuo and met several well-known people in the field of medical imaging. Recalling the days in MCL, he felt thankful that he joined the large MCL group, where he interacted a lot with his fellows from various sub-groups. Those experiences are helpful because communication skills are crucial to start career in academia.

Dr. Woo also gave several suggestions to those who want to pursue success in academia. To become a researcher, one needs to be highly motivated and always keeps a clear goal. Humbleness is another important characteristic, which makes one open to different ideas and collaboration with other researchers. The last characteristic he emphasized is persistence. Research is challenging and persistence helps one endure the inevitable struggling.