Visiting Researchers from Korea

Ms. So Hyun Kim and Ms. Jiae Sur are visiting the US and doing research in the laboratory of Prof. Steven A. Soper. So Hyun and Jiae are from South Korea and are undergraduates at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). UNIST, which was founded in 2009, is one of the four public universities in South Korea dedicated to research in the areas of science and technology. Interestingly, UNIST teaches 100% of its classes in English and thus, all incoming students must be well versed in the English language. UNIST comprises 9 science and engineering schools, a business school, and the Division of General Studies (DGS), which oversees the school's first year undergraduate curriculum. UNIST has 4,052 undergraduate students and 1,332 graduate students.

UNIST is located in Ulsan, which is the home of Hyundai motor company and shipyards. Ulsan is the 7th largest city in South Korea with over 1.1 million citizens. Ulsan is located in the southeastern region of South Korea and is along the coast adjacent to the Sea of Japan.

So Hyun and Jiae are part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at UNIST, which is a summer research program focused on sending UNIST undergraduate students to perform high quality research in laboratories located outside of South Korea. The goal is to familiarize undergraduate students with global research and experience new cultures. In the Soper laboratory, So Hyun, who is a major in chemistry, is developing new chemical linkers used to attach antibodies to surfaces to select rare tumor cells from whole blood in cancer patients and then, photolytically release the cells from the capture surface so that the tumor cells can be further studied. Jiae, who is majoring in biology, is working on developing a protocol to identify tumor cells by staining them with unique dyes to allow for determining the type of tumor cell taken from a cancer patient. Both will be in the laboratory of Prof. Soper until August 11.