Young-wook Jun attended Yonsei University in Korea, where he received a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry in 1999. He did his graduate studies at the Korea Advances Institute of Science, where he broadly investigated the chemistry of nanocrystals. He carried out postdoctoral studies with Prof. Paul Alivisatos at the University of California, Berkeley when he first began research related to microscopy- and nanotechnology-based biophysical tools. In 2010, he joined the faculty of UCSF, where he is presently a professor. He received the Endowed Hemming Fellowship, Sandler-UCSF New Frontier Research Award, The World Most-Influential Scientific Mind.