Ken Cho Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology at the University of California Irvine. He received his undergraduate education at Grinnell College in Iowa, majoring in Chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 at the University of Pennsylvania where he cloned the first human RNA polymerase gene. During his postdoc at UCLA, he contributed to uncovering the mocleualr nature of Spemann’s organizer. At UC Irvine, he uncovered many critical regualtory mechanisms controlling Nodal and BMP signaling pathways. His current interest are 1) to elucidate the mechanisms controlling endoderm formation by combining experimental and computational approaches, and 2) to understand the preimplantation mammalian development