Jungnam Cho studies mobile genetic elements known as transposons in plants.

During evolution, transposons have helped plants acquire new traits by changing their DNA sequence. Jungnam aims to understand how transposons move and then use this understanding to develop crops with greater resilience to stress.

He sees transposons as genomic ‘dark matter’ that can be used as a tool for genetic improvement of crops and ultimately contribute to global food security.

Jungnam is the third international scientist to join CEPAMS. Jungnam is originally from South Korea and in 2018 he moved to the CEPAMS lab in Shanghai from the University of Cambridge in the UK.