Chiwook Park

Dr. Chiwook Park received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Chemistry from Seoul National University in South Korea. He then pursued his PhD at the University of Wisconsin with Professor Ronald T. Raines, where he studied the function of ribonuclease A using protein engineering. He moved west to the University of California in Berkeley for his postdoctoral training with Professor Susan Marqusee, with whom he studied the energy landscapes of proteins by proteolysis. Dr. Park joined the faculty of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue in 2005. His lab studies the energy landscape of protein conformations and protein-ligand interactions. Dr. Park won the Teacher of the Year Award in 2015 from the College of Pharmacy at Purdue and received the Best Paper of the Year Awardfrom the Protein Society (our co-sponsor!) in 2013. Besides studying protein energy landscapes, Dr. Park loves solving mathematical puzzles; he can solve the Rubik's Cube in about one minute! When he's not in the lab, Dr. Park also enjoys classical music and cooking.