Wonpil Im was born in Seoul, Korea and mostly grew up in Seoul. In 1994, he received his B.Sc. in Chemistry, Hanyang University, Seoul. During these years, influenced by Professor Youngdo Won, he got interested in theoretical chemistry. He pursued his graduate studies under the direction of Professor Won and received his M.Sc. degree in 1996 with a theoretical study of thermodynamic, structural, and dynamic properties of liquid alkanes and liquid acetonitrile using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. He also had an opportunity to work on the biomolecular simulation program CHARMM and learn its inner workings.

Moving to Montreal, Canda in February 1997, he started Ph.D. studies in Chemistry at University of Montreal. Under the guidance of Professor Benoit Roux, he worked on Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) continuum electrostatics and its applications to methodological developments such as PB solvation forces, Grand Canonical Monte Carlo - Brownian Dynamics (GCMC/BD) algorithm, Generalized Solvation Boundary Potentials (GSBP), and a general treatment of electrostatic reaction fields for Brownian dynamics simulations of ion channels. He also had a chance to perform a MD simulation of OmpF porin from Escherichia coli in an explicit membrane with 1 M KCl aqueous salt solution. Since June 2000, following Professor Roux, he continued the Ph.D. studies in Biochemistry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York, where he focused on a theoretical study of ion permeation and selectivity in OmpF porin and its mutants using MD, GCMC/BD and PNP. He received his Ph.D. in 2002 with the thesis entitled "The Role of Electrostatics in Ion Permeation and Selectivity of Biological Membrane Channels".

In June 2002, he joined the group of Professor Charles L. Brooks, III at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla. He soon got interested in the development and application of generalized Born (GB) electrostatic theory to the dynamics and folding of biomolecules. In particular, he made considerable efforts to extend the method to take the influence of biological membranes into account. He worked on applications of the membrane GB model to insertion, folding and assembly of various membrane proteins (or transmembrane domains) as well as modeling of rhodopsin, a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR). He was the recipient of a CTBP (Center for Theoretical Biological Physics) fellowship.

During his postdoctoral period, he has also made considerable efforts on Korean scientist community in San Diego. For instance, he successfully organized 2004 Lucera Open Tennis Tournament, 2004 Scientist Soccer Team (sports.mov), and 2004 KSEA-SD Science Park Symposium (2004Symposium.htm), and 2005 Korean Scientist Happy New Year's Party.

He joined the Faculty in Department of Molecular Biosciences and Center for Bioinformatics at the University of Kansas in August 2005. He is excited about this new adventure.