At Yale, Andrew Koh holds the title of museum scientist, a role that blends scientific techniques with humanistic approaches that unravel the mysteries of the past.
As a graduate student, Koh founded the ARCHEM Project in 2003. This innovative project utilizes archaeochemistry to fuse together archaeology, ancient texts, and residue analysis. The goal is to enable researchers to identify ancient organic goods and understand their role in ancient societies. Through this work, the ARCHEM Project reveals the effects that the production and use of these goods had on early historic communities and cultural practices.
Today, Koh and his team make up the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program whose work, in his words, “…has the potential to open new horizons for our understanding of the past.”
Born in Korea and now a museum scientist at the Peabody Museum, Koh lived in Guam until he was 10 years old and eventually settled with his family in Chicago. He credits the career practicality of his parents and the wise optimism of his maternal grandfather for his decision to double major in biophysics and classics at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He later earned an M.A. in biblical studies and a Ph.D. in archaeology and archaeological science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Title: Museum scientist, Yale Peabody Museum
Time in current role: 2.5 years
Started at Yale: 2022
What is your role at Yale?
My title is museum scientist, a relatively new position, but there are many scientists working at the Peabody. My research combines the latest scientific techniques with more humanistic approaches to better understand the past and present. My work is interdisciplinary, or more accurately, transdisciplinary, combining fields like the study of ancient Greek and Egyptian texts with chemistry. This approach helps solve deep historical questions and aims to define the future of pharmacology and medicine while respecting the ongoing traditions of institutions such as Yale.
While I conduct my research with a team of research assistants, I also work with Peabody Museum Director David Skelly, guiding a student project in his first-year seminar, Collections of the Peabody Museum. This semester, I am contributing to a class in the Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations department that both exposes students to frontline research and supplies my program with reference data through the ethnographic recreation of ancient organic goods that can then be compared to organic residue samples we isolate in Yale’s vast collections and archaeological sites across the globe. Teaching students here, which I have always loved, serves as a complementary component to advancing my research in the field, where we can bring our archaeochemistry techniques to the active dig sites and museums of our partners overseas.
Why Yale?
My work is fundamentally academic and benefits from being at a university with uncommon resources. Yale has millions of artifacts in its collections, which are crucial for my research and a rarity in North America. The proximity to these resources and the ability to collaborate across departments are invaluable. As a premier research institution, Yale has a history of supporting important projects with uncertain future payoffs. For example, gas chromatography was advanced here because Yale recognized its potential value in the abstract. Yale’s history of nurturing and incubating innovative ideas across disciplines, along with its vast collection of artifacts, makes it the ideal place for my work.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
My job includes making a unique impact and doing meaningful work. Each day is different, and I enjoy the variety and the challenge of coordinating various tasks, much like conducting a symphony. Gaining trust from colleagues and presenting our work are also rewarding aspects that I never take for granted, such as the opportunity I recently had to present research for lecture series within the departments of Anthropology and Classics. Despite practical challenges, the ability to carve out a niche and answer big questions for disparate academic groups at the top of their respective fields is highly fulfilling.
What challenges have you faced in pursuing your career?
Pursuing an unconventional career path that melds and maintains meaningful academic interactions with disparate academic traditions meant not having clear job prospects at the end of my graduate program. I believed that what I was doing was valuable, but there was great uncertainty about how to support my research. I worked in industry at Abbott Labs before graduate school, and I knew that the monetary difference between the two professions was significant. If I wanted quick money, I would have gone to Silicon Valley. If I wanted a secure, traditional experience, I would have picked one discipline. I’m doing this because I feel a sense of duty to take what has been invested in me and keep bringing these different disciplines together to produce something quite different for the larger research community and, more immediately, research at Yale.
What keeps you motivated in your work?
My motivation comes from both the overt task of uncovering ancient mysteries and the broader goal of enabling others to tackle bigger questions. I take pleasure in contributing to archaeology and making it a 21st-century discipline. Additionally, I value setting a positive precedent for transdisciplinary work that can benefit future researchers in various fields. My students have also benefited from this approach, finding success in diverse fields such as pharmaceuticals, antiquities law, and medical school. Flexibility and adaptability have been constants throughout my career.
What do you hope someone reading this will take away from your career story?
I hope they will consider following their passions in building a career with as much courage as possible. A decade ago, I predicted that people wouldn’t understand what I’m doing for 10 to 15 years, and now I find myself in that time frame. I do not pretend that it is easy or redact the past, but today I find satisfaction in knowing that I took the path less traveled. Along the way, I have tried to make time for deeper dialogue with colleagues and foster environments where meaningful conversations can happen — interactions that I have found can lead to significant insights and collaborations that inspire.
