About

Kee-Hyun Kim is a professor of the practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University. A native of Seoul, Korea, he is a cellist praised for his assertive style and vital musical spirit. Kim has participated in numerous prestigious festivals, including the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Kronberg Cello Masterclasses and Festival, the World Cello Congress III, the Aspen Music Festival, and Music Academy of the West. He has won top prizes in major competitions in Korea, such as the Ehwa, Sae-gae, and Korean Newspaper Competitions, and placed second in the Pusan National Competition. His awards include the Landgraf-von-Hessen Prize at the 1999 Kronberg Cello Masterclasses and second prize in the Hudson Valley String competition in 2002. As a founding member of the Parker Quartet, Kim has received notable distinctions including 1st prize at the Bordeaux String Quartet competition, the Cleveland Quartet Award, and a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2010. Kim began his musical education early, attending the Juilliard pre-college in 1992, and studying at the Korean National University of the Arts, the New England Conservatory, and the Walnut Hill School. He holds a B.M. and two M.M. degrees from the New England Conservatory. Since fall 2014, he has been teaching at Harvard University’s music department alongside the members of the Parker Quartet. When not performing, Kim is interested in maintaining physical and mental health, exploring international cuisine and world music, and caring for his cat, Sammy. He plays on an 1844 Giaccomo Rivolta cello made in Milan and uses a custom-made bow from Benoit Rolland.

Research topics

• Biology
• Cell biology
• Neuroscience
• Internal medicine
• Psychology
• Pathology
• Chemistry
• Computational biology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• A new era in regenerative medicine: Cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease is on the horizon

  Cell stem cell · 2025-06-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Optimization of cell replacement therapy by modulating the brain microenvironment induced by needle trauma in Parkinson’s disease 3570

  The Journal of Immunology · 2025-11-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Description Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by the progressive degeneration of midbrain dopamine (mDA) neurons within the substantia nigra, manifesting in profound motor and non-motor deficits. Our prior clinical trials demonstrated that autologous transplantation of patient’s iPSC-derived mDA progenitors (mDAPs) successfully circumvented immune rejection; however, modest cell survival and limited functional recovery highlighted suboptimal outcomes. Further investigation implicated intraoperative ‘needle trauma (NT)’ as a significant trigger of innate immune responses, compromising graft viability. In response, we developed intra-striatal co-transplantation strategy incorporating autologous regulatory T cells with mDAPs, which yielded enhanced outcomes. Mechanistic studies on NT revealed its profound impact on the brain microenvironment, identifying it as a critical factor in graft vulnerability and failure. Our research demonstrated that NT induces a cascade of immune responses, including the activation of key molecular and cellular pathways associated with inflammation and tissue damage. Through in-depth analysis, we uncovered specific mechanisms by which the inflammatory microenvironment compromises graft cell survival and therapeutic outcomes. Additionally, our findings highlight novel regulatory pathways that can be targeted to mitigate inflammation, providing a refined understanding of how to optimize brain microenvironment for improved cell replacement therapy in PD. Funding Sources This work was partially supported by NIH grants (NS127391 and NS129188), the Parkinson’s Cell Therapy Research Fund at McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Masson Family Endowed Scholar in Neurosurgery. Topic Categories Neuroimmunology (NEUR)

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Profiling short-term longitudinal severity progression and associated genes in COVID-19 patients using EHR and single-cell analysis

  Scientific Reports · 2025-07-01

  articleOpen access

  Here we propose CovSF, a deep learning model designed to track and forecast short-term severity progression of COVID-19 patients using longitudinal clinical records. The motivation stems from the need for timely medical resource allocation, improved treatment decisions during pandemics, and the understanding of severity progression related immunology. The COVID-19 Severity Forecasting model, CovSF, utilizes 15 clinical features to profile the severity levels of hospital admitted patients and also forecast their severity levels of up to three days ahead. CovSF was trained on a large COVID-19 cohort (n=4,509), achieving an AUROC of 0.92 with 0.85 and 0.89 sensitivity and specificity on an external validation dataset (n=443). The type of oxygen therapy administered was utilized as the target predictive label, which is often used as the severity index. This approach enables the inclusion of a more comprehensive dataset encompassing patients across the full spectrum of severity, rather than restricting the analysis to more narrowly defined outcomes such as ICU admission or mortality. We focused on profiling deteriorating and recovering health conditions, which were validated using patient matched single-cell transcriptomes. Especially, we showed that the immunology significantly differed between the samples during deterioration and recovery, whose severity levels were the same, and thus presenting the importance of longitudinal analysis. We believe that the framework of CovSF can be extended to other respiratory infectious diseases to alleviate the strain of allocating hospital resources, especially in pandemics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating artificial intelligence and optogenetics for Parkinson’s disease diagnosis and therapeutics in male mice

  Nature Communications · 2025-08-21 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Parkinson's disease (PD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, presents complex motor symptoms and lacks effective disease-modifying treatments. Here we show that integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with optogenetic intervention, termed optoRET, modulating c-RET (REarranged during Transfection) signalling, enables task-independent behavioural assessments and therapeutic benefits in freely moving male AAV-hA53T mice. Utilising a 3D pose estimation technique, we developed tree-based AI models that detect PD severity cohorts earlier and with higher accuracy than conventional methods. Employing an explainable AI technique, we identified a comprehensive array of PD behavioural markers, encompassing gait and spectro-temporal features. Moreover, our AI-driven analysis highlights that optoRET effectively alleviates PD progression by improving limb coordination and locomotion and reducing chest tremor. Our study demonstrates the synergy of integrating AI and optogenetic techniques to provide an efficient diagnostic method with extensive behavioural evaluations and sets the stage for an innovative treatment strategy for PD.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• HybridLinker: Topology-Guided Posterior Sampling for Enhanced Diversity and Validity in 3D Molecular Linker Generation

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-24

  preprintOpen access

  Linker generation is critical in drug discovery applications such as lead optimization and PROTAC design, where molecular fragments are assembled into diverse drug candidates via molecular linker. Existing methods fall into point cloud-free and point cloud-aware categories based on their use of fragments' 3D poses alongside their topologies in sampling the linker's topology. Point cloud-free models prioritize sample diversity but suffer from lower validity due to overlooking fragments' spatial constraints, while point cloud-aware models ensure higher validity but restrict diversity by enforcing strict spatial constraints. To overcome these trade-offs without additional training, we propose HybridLinker, a framework that enhances point cloud-aware inference by providing diverse bonding topologies from a pretrained point cloud-free model as guidance. At its core, we propose LinkerDPS, the first diffusion posterior sampling (DPS) method operating across point cloud-free and point cloud-aware spaces, bridging molecular topology with 3D point clouds via an energy-inspired function. By transferring the diverse sampling distribution of point cloud-free models into the point cloud-aware distribution, HybridLinker significantly surpasses baselines, improving both validity and diversity in foundational molecular design and applied drug optimization tasks, establishing a new DPS framework in the molecular domains beyond imaging.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pre-clinical safety and efficacy of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived products for autologous cell therapy in Parkinson’s disease

  Cell stem cell · 2025-02-13 · 27 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The moderating effect of self-compassion on the relationship between emotional expression ambivalence and psychological well-being in upper elementary school children

  Chodeung sangdam yeon-gu/Cho'deung sangdam yeon'gu · 2024-01-31

  articleSenior author

  본 연구에서는 초등학교 고학년 아동의 정서표현 양가성과 심리적 안녕감의 관계에서 자기 자비의 조절효과를 검증하는 것이 목적이다. 이를 위하여 서울특별시와 경기도 소재한 10개 초등학교의 5~6학년 학생 613명을 대상으로 자료를 수집하여 연구모형을 검증하였다. 자료 처리 및 분석을 위하여 SPSS PROCESS Macro 4.2를 이용하였다. 이 연구의 결과는 다음과 같 다. 첫째, 초등학교 고학년 아동의 정서표현 양가성, 심리적 안녕감, 자기자비는 서로 유의미 한 상관관계가 나타났다. 둘째, 초등학교 고학년 아동의 정서표현 양가성과 심리적 안녕감의 관계에서 자기자비의 유의미한 조절효과가 확인되었다. 본 연구의 결과는 정서표현 양가성과 심리적 안녕감의 관련성을 확인하고, 정서표현 양가성과 심리적 안녕감의 관계를 자기자비가 조절하고 있음을 밝혔다는데 의의가 있다. 이러한 연구 결과는 초등학교 고학년 아동의 심리 적 안녕감을 높이기 위해 자기자비에 기반한 개입을 할 필요가 있음을 시사한다.

  PublisherDOI

• Past, present, and future of cell replacement therapy for parkinson’s disease: a novel emphasis on host immune responses

  Cell Research · 2024-05-22 · 26 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Parkinson's disease (PD) stands as the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer's disease, and its prevalence continues to rise with the aging global population. Central to the pathophysiology of PD is the specific degeneration of midbrain dopamine neurons (mDANs) in the substantia nigra. Consequently, cell replacement therapy (CRT) has emerged as a promising treatment approach, initially supported by various open-label clinical studies employing fetal ventral mesencephalic (fVM) cells. Despite the initial favorable results, fVM cell therapy has intrinsic and logistical limitations that hinder its transition to a standard treatment for PD. Recent efforts in the field of cell therapy have shifted its focus towards the utilization of human pluripotent stem cells, including human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, to surmount existing challenges. However, regardless of the transplantable cell sources (e.g., xenogeneic, allogeneic, or autologous), the poor and variable survival of implanted dopamine cells remains a major obstacle. Emerging evidence highlights the pivotal role of host immune responses following transplantation in influencing the survival of implanted mDANs, underscoring an important area for further research. In this comprehensive review, building upon insights derived from previous fVM transplantation studies, we delve into the functional ramifications of host immune responses on the survival and efficacy of grafted dopamine cells. Furthermore, we explore potential strategic approaches to modulate the host immune response, ultimately aiming for optimal outcomes in future clinical applications of CRT for PD.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enhanced anti-cancer efficacy of arginine deaminase expressed by tumor-seeking Salmonella Gallinarum

  Research Square · 2024-08-20

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enhanced anti-cancer efficacy of arginine deaminase expressed by tumor-seeking Salmonella Gallinarum

  Oncogene · 2024-09-25 · 7 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01DC006501

  NIH · $1.3M · 2009

• NIH Grant R21AG046599

  NIH · $435k · 2017

• NIH Grant R21MH087903

  NIH · $627k · 2011

• NIH Grant P50NS039793

  NIH · $7.2M · 2011

• NIH Grant R01MH048866

  NIH · $4.1M · 2014

Frequent coauthors

• Pierre Leblanc

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  80 shared

• Chun‐Hyung Kim

  78 shared

• Sangmi Chung

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  66 shared

• Young Cha

  Harvard University

  60 shared

• Bin Song

  Harvard University

  57 shared

• Jeffrey S. Schweitzer

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  43 shared

• Ole Isacson

  Harvard University

  35 shared

• Woori Kim

  Ulsan College

  35 shared

Awards & honors

• Landgraf-von-Hessen Prize at the 1999 Kronberg Cello Masterc…
• second prize in the Hudson Valley String competition (2002)
• 1st prize at the Bordeaux String Quartet competition
• Cleveland Quartet Award
• 2010 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance"