Dr. Chanhong Kim serves as a principal investigator at the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology (PSC, since 2014) and Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences (CEMPS, since 2020). He completed a PhD at ETH Zurich in 2014 and worked as a senior research associate at Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University before joining Shanghai in 2014. He was appointed as a guest editor in The Plant Cell in 2020.

KIM lab research aims to elucidate the molecular and biochemical regulatory mechanisms that underlie organelle-to-nucleus retrograde signaling. They are especially interested in understanding how chloroplasts sense environmental fluctuations and produce signaling molecules to communicate with other subcellular compartments, essential in sustaining cellular homeostasis and rapidly adapting to changing environmental conditions. Current research mainly focuses on (i) PSII damage, repair, and related signaling, (ii) PSII engineering (ROS-insensitive), ROS sensors, and dissecting their signaling cascades (iii) ROS- and SA-signaling crosstalk. KIM expects that the research outcomes and their application will strengthen chloroplast resilience to oxidative stress and unveil novel components that enable chloroplasts as environmental sensors.