Meet Dr. Bae, Associate Professor, Department of Dermatology, St. Vincent’s Hospital College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea.

Take a look at his abstract:

An Identification of Potential Therapeutics for Vitiligo by Mass Screening for 1,732 Medicines in Korean National Health Insurance Database. Watch his presentation online.

Discovering Patients’ Voice on Social Network Service: Web Scraping and Text-Mining (PDF)

Authors: Jung Min Bae, MD, PhD

His work:  I wish to do research that can give hope to vitiligo patients. I am currently focusing on vitiligo surgery and epidemiological research. I am trying to improve micro punch grafting, cellular grafting, and micro-pigmentation to achieve better outcomes. Also, I am looking for various beneficial drugs for vitiligo patients from big data analysis. Someday I hope to find a way to help patients with vitiligo.

Why he got into vitiligo research: “Vitiligo affects 1% of the population and profoundly impacts patients’ quality of life. However, the development of new treatments for vitiligo is very little compared to other major skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. For light skin patients such as Caucasians, vitiligo could be a simple matter, even though I don’t believe it is a simple matter. Having met a number of Korean patients who profoundly suffer from vitiligo, where the white patches appear more evident on Asian skin, I thought that Asian dermatologists including me had responsibilities to study harder and find the solution for our vitiligo patients.”

Interesting facts: “I enjoy traveling to new places and taking pictures of my family. This hobby ties directly to my clinical practice, as I also do my best to take high-quality patient pictures. A series of photographs taken at regular intervals not only records the progress of the treatment but also is a unique gift for my patients. I find this to be rewarding given the pleasure it brings to my patients. Meanwhile, meeting new people in various places helps invigorate my life and research. In an unfamiliar setting, I can see some issues from different perspectives. Traveling would be a driving force to study without being exhausted.”