Dr. IL Minn was born in Seoul, a capital of South Korea, where he completed his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Han Yang University and M.S. in Biotechnology from the Korea Advanced Institute of science and Technology.

He served the Korean Air Force as an officer for 4 years before he came to the United States of America for his Ph.D. at the Pennsylvania State University. He studied the mechanism of centrosomal attachment to the nucleus using C. elegans as a model organism. He then started his postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research focus is hematopoietic stem cells and leukemic stem cells. He received the Homer F. Braddock and Nellie H. and Oscar L. Roberts Fellowships from the Pennsylvania State University and the postdoctoral fellowship from the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund. He is currently serving as a president of the Johns Hopkins Postdoctoral Association (JHPDA) representing 1500 postdoctoral fellows at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.