Reported by Sung-hoon Gee, Minnesota CP
The 2024 Korean American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) Midwest Regional Conference (MRC) was held at Crowne Plaza Chicago in Northbrook, Illinois, from Saturday, March 23rd to Sunday, March 24th,2024. With our strong passion for science, technology, and engineering, this conference aimed to bring together professionals from the Midwest area and beyond and to provide a platform to share research ideas, scientific and professional achievements, and recent technology trends.
The conference was organized by local KSEA chapters in the Midwest, including Chicagoland, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa City, Ohio, Wisconsin, and UIUC. The conference was highly successful with more than 100 registered and attended, which exceeded the past year’s attendance. The composition of the attendees was well-balanced with 18.3% academic faculty members, 19.2% industry scientists, 8.7% post-doctoral members, 13.5% graduate students, 37.5% undergraduate students, and 2.9% high school students. About 50% of the attendees were from UIUC and Chicagoland, 18.3% from Indiana, 12.5% from Wisconsin, 3.8% from Iowa City, 6.7% from Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio combined, and 8.7% from other states.
The conference was opened with welcoming remarks by the organizers, followed by the Keynote speech by Dr. Young-Kee Kim, Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics and the past KSEA president. The presentation was titled “Making the Invisible Visible: Searching for Fundamental Laws of Nature”. Two technical sessions – Engineering and Science – were held in parallel on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. The Engineering session speakers included Dr. Yong-Kyu Yoon (University of Florida), Dr. Jae Hyeon Ryu (University of Idaho-Boise), Dr. Myunghee Kim (University of Illinois at Chicago), Dr. Sangyoon Han (Michigan Technical University), Dr. Yeongin Kim (University of Cincinnati), Dr. Kibum Kim (Purdue University), Dr. Soonhyoung Kwon (Purdue University) and Dr. Jongyeol Jeong (Argonne National Laboratory). The Science session speakers were Dr. Jayoung Kim (ThermoFisher Scientific), Dr. Jong Park (Moffitt Cancer Center), Dr. Jeesoo Lee (Northwestern University), Dr. Jiyeon Kim (Former BridgeBio Therapeutics), Dr. Minjae Park (University of Chicago), Dr. Dasol Choi (University of Wisnconsin-Madison), Dr. Jua Lee (Northwestern University), and Dr Donghoon Yoon (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences). Saturday afternoon program included a special talk titled “How can we accelerate DE&I in STEM? A perspective of a chemist” by Dr. Tricia May-Dracka at AbbVie and a panel discussion on immigration and career development. In addition, the YG group hosted a Leadership session that is designed to encourage YG officers and future leaders to obtain further leadership skills and to network with colleagues and mentors. The session included a presentation by Dr. Katherine Cho at Loyola University – Chicago (presentation title: Transformative, sustainable change requires power, knowledge, connections, and strategy).
The 2024 MRC was a huge success due to hard work by many student volunteers, organizers, and prominent speakers as well as sponsorship and support by various groups, including KSEA Headquarters, KUSCO, and the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Chicago. The organizers plan to receive feedback from the attendees via an online survey to improve the future MRC by incorporating learnings from this year’s event. (2024 MRC website: https://mrc.ksea.org/)
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KSEA e-Letters 