KSEA New York Metropolitan
Conference Co-Chair
KSEA Philadelphia
Conference Co-Chair
KSEA New Jersey
Conference Chair
The KSEA Chapters of New Jersey (Chapter President: Kooksang Moon), Philadelphia (Chapter President: Albert Kim), and New York Metropolitan (Chapter President: Ju-hyun Lee) hosted the 29th KSEA Northeast Regional Conference (NRC) on March 28, 2020, partnering with a few KSEA-affiliated professional societies (APS’s) that are very active in the region, including the Korean-American Innovative Technology Engineers and Entrepreneurs (KITEE), Korean-American Women in Science and Engineering (KWiSE), Korean-American Society in Biotech and Pharmaceuticals (KASBP), New York Korean Biologists (NYKB), and Philadelphia Korean Scholars Association (PKSA). The NRC is an annual conference jointly hosted by the three KSEA chapters and was held entirely online this year for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic that broke out a couple months before the conference date. The Conference Committee had considered holding a small in-person gathering along with online programs until the last minute, but decided not to have any in-person meeting due to safety concerns.
While it was all online, this year’s NRC consisted of two plenary sessions and four parallel technical sessions – IT and data science, life science, engineering, and KWiSE. The conference featured a wide array of sessions which highlighted its theme, Innovation through Connectivity. Distinguished leaders from diverse fields discussed the cutting-edge advancements leading the next generation of science and engineering. Particularly, three invited plenary speakers, Dr. Kiho Im (Harvard Medical School), Dr. Frank J. Lee (Drexel University), and Ms. Raeha Kim, Esq (Millennials Chamber of Commerce) shared their interesting works, challenges, and suggestions on (1) Quantitative in vivo MRI assessment of prenatal cortical development in the human brain, (2) Skyscraper Games Trilogy: City-Wide Mixed-Reality Games, and (3) Transcending the Norm and Wearing Multi-Hats.
NRC partnered with the Andrew Kim Memorial Foundation again this year to select its 3rd scholarship fellows in the fields of life sciences and engineering. Awardees were Young Jae Woo (Icahn School of Medicine), Huensuk Kim (Icahn School of Medicine), Yeongsu Cho (Columbia University), David K. Park (Columbia University), Jae Gyun Oh (Icahn School of Medicine) and Yongtaek Oh (Drexel University). Commemorating Andrew Jay-Hoon Kim, an alumnus of the Columbia Engineering school and a victim of the 9/11, this prestigious fellowship provided not only the financial support for young scientists and engineers to attend the conference, but also a training opportunity to present and discuss their research achievements to a large group of audiences.
Taking advantage of the online platform, this year’s NRC provided KSEA members in other States and partners in Korea with the opportunity to attend the conference and attracted a total of 143 participants from diverse geographical backgrounds – from more than 10 States in the US, and about 10 from Korea. Overall, the 29th NRC was an enormous success and further heightened its reputation in providing a social platform for fostering the professional development of the KSEA members, this year in a totally different, new format. The NRC Committee also shared their experiences in executing an online conference with other KSEA groups who then hosted online conferences and events in April and May including the KSEA Special Forum on COVID-19 and the KSEA Science Concert Series.
Group photo during the Closing Session of the NRC 2020
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