Choongwon Jeong

Choongwon Jeong is a population geneticist whose primary focus is to unravel the genetic history and local adaptations in East, Central, and North Asian human populations as well as their ungulate domesticates. During his PhD at the University of Chicago, he studied the genetic history of high-altitude East Asian populations (Tibetans and Sherpas) and their altitude adaptations using both present-day and ancient genomes. As a post-doctoral researcher and research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, he explored ancient genomes and their history from the Mediterranean to the Far East, in particular in and around Mongolia. His group at Seoul National University has been continuing the ancient genome-based reconstruction of human population history and comparing the human history with that of their companions in the Eurasian steppe: cattle, sheep, and goats. He is a tenure-track associate professor in Biological Sciences at Seoul National University.