Affiliation: Colorado State University - Pueblo, Institute of Cannabis Research

Dr. Park completed his PhD in Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University. As a postdoctoral fellow, he joined the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona. Before joining the cannabis research team, he worked for two years at the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Agriculture Research Service (ARS) as a molecular biologist.

Since April 2018, Dr. Park has served as a senior scientist/research liaison in the Institute of Cannabis Research (ICR) at Colorado State University - Pueblo. Dr. Park has been leading multi-tiered research projects with the assistantce of multiple student researchers, seeking insights into fundamental cannabis biology and cannabinoid chemistry to address the intrinsic questions of why cannabis plants produce secondary metabolites such as cannabinoids and terpenoids, how they exploit the chemicals for their survival, and what evolutionary benefits they may have. To address these research questions, he has been collaborating with numerous academic institutes to better understand Cannabis plants through investigating the genetic regulations underlying cannabinoid biosynthesis. The research employs a wide range of molecular-level approaches, from next generation sequencing technology to proteomics. Additionally, he conducts a variety of research projects to explore new therapeutic uses of cannabidiol (CBD).