Min Hyung Ryu, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow at Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. His interdisciplinary research focuses on utilizing large population ‘omics data to identify molecular markers and drivers of COPD. Before his postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Ryu trained as an experimental scientist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, with doctoral research on air pollution and COPD. His ultimate goal is to leverage “big molecular data” to help patients and their healthcare teams mitigate environmental and genetic risk factors for chronic respiratory diseases.