Managing Director
RNA Innovation Center, Johns Hopkins University
Michelle Kim is the inaugural Managing Director of the Johns Hopkins RNA Innovation Center. Early in her career, she studied the mechanisms governing miRNA-mediated mRNA translation inhibition in Rachel Green’s lab. During her post-doctoral work in Bob Siliciano’s lab, she investigated features of the HIV RNA genome required for pathogenicity. Following that, Dr. Kim joined the core team at Circulomics, an early-stage, pre-commercial startup focused on creating innovative genomics tools. During her tenure there, she developed and commercialized multiple sample prep tools for long read sequencing across diverse genera. By 2021, Circulomics had a global distribution network and was acquired by PacBio, a leader in long read sequencing technologies. At PacBio, Dr. Kim helped develop targeted solutions for agrigenomics and human clinical applications. She also led collaborations with large-scale, international genomics projects such as The Vertebrate Genome Project and The Darwin Tree of Life project.
Dr. Kim earned her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and her PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.