The year she turned 35, she was appointed a professor in Seoul National University’s School of Biological Sciences. She had graduated from the university’s microbiology department and earned a doctorate at Oxford. In 2007, she received the Young Scientist Award and Woman Scientist/Engineer of the Year. In 2008, according to Science Times, she received the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award.
In 2009, she was chosen for the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine. In 2010, she was named a National Scientist, and in November she received the Grand Prize of the Amorepacific Women Scientist Award. In 2012, she became director of the IBS Center for RNA Research.
In 2013, she became a foreign member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and was selected for the Top Scientist and Technologist Award of Korea and as S-Oil Leading Scientist of the Year. In 2014, she became a full member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, she received the Scientist of the Year Award from the Korea Science Journalists Association.
In 2017, she was appointed Seoul National University’s first female endowed chair professor. In 2018, she published research in Science on mixed tails that protect mRNA from degradation. In 2019, she was selected for the Asan Award in Medicine, basic medicine category.
The breakthrough yearThe year she turned 51, she announced that her team had completed the genome map of the COVID-19 virus. Newsis writes that this was one occasion on which her name became widely known to the Korean public.
In 2021, she was selected a foreign member of the Royal Society, the first Korean. In 2023, she published the Dicer protein structure papers in Nature and viral RNA research in Cell. In 2024, she was selected for the Grand Prize of the Lim Sung-ki Researcher Award. In 2025, she published research in Science on how mRNA vaccines work.
In 2026, she received the Changjo Medal of the Order of Science and Technology Merit, published an Argonaute paper in Nature and was named the first HFSP Nakasone Award winner from Korea.
V. Narry Kim (born in 1969) became a professor at Seoul National University in 2004, the year she turned 35, and became known when she announced the completion of the COVID-19 virus genome map on Apr 9, 2020, the year she turned 51. She was selected a foreign member of the Royal Society in 2021, the year she turned 52.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.