I was selected as one of the 27 delegates of the Qualcomm IT Tour among engineering students in Korea. At the meeting with Dr. Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated, "leadership" was the most critical word he emphasized. Just like Dr. Jacobs, I have also sought to enlarge my range of thoughts with an aggressive attitude toward diverse challenges that I have encountered. In this context, I would like to emphasize that my pursuit of further graduate study in IST stems especially from my passion and intellectual interest for the field. It does not mean that I think light of certain societal contribution that my achievement might make. Rather, I am interested in presenting science and technology in a widely understandable form so that more people can benefit from them than the do now.
The paramount drive for my academic work is the happiness and endless intellectual curiosity I feel whenever I study. It has hardly been thinkable to imagine myself not engaged in scientific inquiry of some sort since the beginning of my undergraduate years. Hopefully, you will notice that I am very accustomed to working "together" with others, within my field or not. I enjoy seeking their diverse approaches to one single topic. Since I am already familiar with the diversity of the communities where I have been affiliated, I will be able to contribute to that within my intended field. While working for a multinational enterprise, I have had a lot of experiences of working in partnership with other institutions in many foreign countries. Collaborative work gave me a chance to immerse myself in various cultures, ways of thinking, and manners of work.
Moreover, these experiences allowed me to stand in others' position, as opposed to mine, and to draw the best consensus through effective discussion with them. Having a frank conversation in a tea break was a very good way of resolving conflicts and misunderstandings. Most importantly, I realized that I myself first need to open my mind to communicate with others, wherever they are from, or whatever ways of feeling and thinking they have. As you know, people are basically of the same nature wherever they are from.
Finally, I have some ideas in the hope of benefiting the educationally underrepresented general public. I think that science and technology should not be owned by a certain class exclusively. This is because, as far as I believe, science and technology are the gifts given to all the people in the world. There is a strong sense in which the mass of the people in our society have little chance to benefit from it, educationally or otherwise. This problem strongly motivates me to write some scientific books that can be understood easily, and help build museums or hold exhibitions of them in days to come so that everyone is blessed to access these facilities without difficulty.
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