BION LIQUID Leadership
CEO and Co-founder
Hotcherl Jeong, Ph.D.
Dr. Hotcherl Jeong serves as chief executive officer of Bion Liquid, which he co-founded in 2023. He also currently holds the title of endowed professor of pharmacy at Ewha Womans University and adjunct professor of iCREATE at Yonsei University in South Korea. His long-term interests involve applications of genetics/genomics and biotechnology for improving patient outcomes.
He earned his B.S. in pharmacy from Sungkyunkwan University and his Ph.D. in molecular biology from University of Utah. When graduated, he was awarded the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi Award. Then, Dr. Jeong pursued his postdoctoral work at UCSF and UC Berkeley. After a seven-year stint in the biotech industry in both US and South Korea, in 2014 he started a professorship at Ewha W. University, where he was in charge of education for nurturing global talent and taught molecular biology, pharmacogenomics, and pharmaceutical biotechnology. Even thereafter, he has continued to take part in various industrial activities.
Dr. Wan-Joo Kim serves as chairman and standing advisor of Bion Liquid, which he co-founded in 2023. As a renowned scientist-turned-entrepreneur, he has nearly five decades of prominent leadership and business development experience in the biotech industry. In 1998, he founded C-TRI, a peptide therapeutics company, and served as CEO until he led the company to a successful acquisition by HLB in 2020. At that point, the company had a market value of over US$500 million. Dr. Kim was instrumental in shaping the company’s strategic focus and the biotech industry across the board in the nation.
In 2000, he co-founded Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization (KoreaBIO) and served as chairman for three years. He currently holds the title of honorary chairman of KoreaBIO. Previously, he served as CEO of Hanmi Fine Chemical and vice-president of Hanmi Pharmaceutical. Dr. Kim also served as Director of National Research Projects at Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology and associate professor at Sungkyunkwan University.
Dr. Kim earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Sungkyunkwan University and a Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutical sciences from University of Hamburg in Germany. His many awards include the Magnolia Medal of Order of Civil Merit, the Jeong Jin-ki Award for Media and Culture, the Steel Tower of Order of Industrial Service Merit, and the Gold Prize of Tech Expo Korea. He also received the Bene-Merit Medal, University of Regensburg in Germany.
Chairman, Standing Advisor, and Co-founder