Byungkyu Brian Park is a Professor of the Engineering Systems and Environment Department at the University of Virginia. In a brief interview with President Park, he shares with us his KSEA involvement, his career journey in traffic engineering, and shares his vision as the 50th President of KSEA.
Can you briefly introduce your background and KSEA involvement?
I finished my high school, undergraduate, and graduate studies in Korea, and I came to the US in 1995 and started my PhD at Texas A&M University. I was passionate about researching traffic engineering and finished my degree in 3 years and received the best dissertation award from the Council of University Transportation Centers. I was still relatively young when I finished my degree; I wanted to get more experience after finishing my PhD. I was able to get a research fellow position at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and that is when I began getting involved with KSEA through attending my first US-Korea Conference in 2001 and attending North Carolina local chapter meetings.
Since then, I have participated in a lot of YG activities as Program Chair of YGTLC in Los Angeles, YG Committee Chair, and Conference Chair for YGTLC in New York. Then, I got involved in UKC organization and also headquarter operations. I was Publication Director under the 40th Administration, then continued my involvement as Vice President and an Auditor for a few years. Importantly, I founded the Central Virginia Chapter in 2009 because I wanted more active KSEA activities in the central Virginia area. Now, I serve as the 50th President of KSEA.
What was your favorite memory from KSEA?
One unforgettable moment was a speaker from UKC – Dr. Paull Shin. He was a senator from the State of Washington. He was an adoptee from Korea who came to the US at the age of 19. He became a professor, then decided to be a politician. He was elected as a senator and made a huge impact on the Korean American community. Getting to know him and his lifelong story, which I continued to follow by watching YouTube videos of his, I was inspired by the lessons he had that would be helpful to us as Korean Americans.
A lot of fun memories also come from interacting with the Young Generation of KSEA (YG). Throughout my time in KSEA, YGs would contact me and ask me for advice. Those are things that help me feel like I am making an impact on young minds. I always remind the younger people that they shouldn’t listen to my single advice, but they need to seek multiple data points and go with what you feel is the most important for their decisions to make less regrets. Hopefully, they are able to find multiple mentors who enjoy mentoring as much as I do and guide the younger minds to success.
In jargon-free language, can you describe your research expertise?
My dissertation research focused on traffic lights: duration of green lights, yellow lights, progression of intersections, and congested intersections. My dissertation was focused on understanding traffic flow and dealing with oversaturated conditions. The program I developed made a small impact in the industry by being used in commercial programs improving traffic contributions. Since then, my research focused on computer simulation modeling in understanding traffic flow.
Models are representative of real world conditions. People use simulations to evaluate what-if scenarios, but if the simulation program is not well calibrated, the program yields false results. My research interest is how the models can be calibrated properly to have more confidence in the scenarios and the evaluations generated.
In recent years, I have focused on control of vehicles for connected and automated vehicles. As the media has been highlighting, the industry is focusing on developing automated vehicles. My research is in traffic engineering, so I focus on automatic vehicles interacting with human driven vehicles and how to improve efficiency when we have human driven vehicles within the flow of automated vehicles. A lot of research is around building efficiency. If we think about when a human driver follows a human driver, they need space and time to be safe. When we have automated vehicles, they are using sensors so they can save time to make decisions. If the vehicles are connected to each other through wireless communications, the communication among the vehicles would be effectively optimized.
Even though human driven vehicles would be interrupting my operations due to the delay in decision-making timing, with information from the automatic vehicle, my control can be a lot better than the traditional way of doing it. My research is basically improving traffic flow with such communications.
As a first-generation immigrant in academia, what were some challenges you faced and how did you overcome the challenge?
English was not my first language, so I had challenges communicating with colleagues when I first started my PhD program. Overcoming the language barrier took longer than expected. The challenge I had was trying not to translate to Korean in my head before speaking in English. At one point of my PhD program, I began to be able to speak in English before translating in my head. It may have been a natural course during my time as a PhD.
When I decided to study abroad in the US, one thing I wanted to achieve was to be better in English than the Korean professors who studied in the US. For many of us, when you come to the US, you speak Korean all the time at home. We would only go to class and listen but speak very little English, which is why English-speaking skills wouldn’t improve a lot. I spent a lot more time and effort to have better verbal communication skills and had an English tutor. If you want to survive and continue to be a good researcher in the US, overcoming English is a must.
Also, having a good mentor is the key to be successful. Hosin David Lee, who was the 40th President of KSEA, has been my mentor. I met Hosin Lee when I was secretary, and he was president of an organization called the Korean Transportation Association in America (KOTAA). When I decided to stay in the US and was preparing for interviews, I didn’t really have anybody to ask around for advice. One day, I asked him for help for an upcoming interview. He literally spent hours on the phone to help me out; and I benefited tremendously from his mentorship, and it has been a continuing relationship. For this reason, I really enjoy being a mentor myself as well.
What is your main vision as the 50th President of KSEA?
I want to make sure that we as a member are proud to be a part of our association. We do a lot of great things in KSEA, and we want to recognize those people who contributed.
My institution, the University of Virginia, does a survey to those graduating where they ask graduates to name one person who made an impact on your career decision. I received an email that congratulated me for impacting a graduate’s career decision, and it felt extremely rewarding. Finding the right people to spotlight and celebrating them is important. That way, those acknowledged can really feel like they are an important part of KSEA and that they are making an impact to the KSEA members and beyond.
As it is the 50th anniversary, we need a vision for the next 50 years. In the past, our members have had a lot of 1st and 1.5 generations. We are looking for 2nd generation KSEA leadership and truly transitioning from 1.5 generation to 2nd and 3rd generation Korean Americans. A challenge we face is that a lot of 1st generation Korean Americans tend to be in academia, while a lot of the 2nd and 3rd generations are in industry. Therefore, we are allocating more resources to industry-related initiatives such as STEP-UP and the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Symposium (IES) at UKC. Collaboration between academia and startups/industry is also important. We hope to find synergy between the groups, and people networking to generate unique opportunities.
Author: 50th Admin Social Media Director Clara Kim
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