Research & Internships
This page shows specific information regarding the research programs and internships that Joonyong Choi has done during his high school years.
Pioneer Academics Summer 2023
The Pioneer Academics Summer 2023 program is a college-level research program aimed to make students study their field of interest and write a related research paper along with a university professor of the field as the mentor. The program consists of five weeks of group sessions (lectures) by the professor regarding the basic content of the field and five weeks of one-to-one individual sessions with the professor to write a research paper on a specific topic. The field I applied for was Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and my mentor was Professor Seda Ogrenci-Memik of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of Northwestern University. In the course, I learned about digital circuits, logic operations, transistors, two’s complement, memory, and many more related concepts. I also learned how to use practical programs like PyRTL when designing programs for simulating hardware components or devices.
Cambridge Centre for International Research (CCIR) Future Scholar 2023
The Cambridge Centre for International Research (CCIR) Future Scholar 2023 program is a college-level research program aimed at making students enroll in and study their field of interest to eventually write a related research paper along with a university professor of the field as the mentor. I was granted a STEM scholarship when admitted to this program due to my outstanding passion and skills demonstrated throughout the application process and interview. The program was a total of thirteen weeks, with each week consisting of a mentor’s lecturing session and a TA session. The field I applied for was Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, and my mentor was Professor Weiwei Sun of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Cambridge University. In this course, I learned about the different types of machine learning and how they actually work. Also, I studied different techniques and concepts related to natural language processing, such as part of speech tagging, sentiment classification, and named entity recognition. Based on the learning of these concepts regarding machine learning and natural language processing, I eventually conducted my own research project, “Named Entity Recognition Analysis of English-Spanish Code-Switched Multilingual Corpus.” The research project was basically training a machine learning model using an English-Spanish code-switched dataset and recognizing patterns or properties of named entity recognition in the datasets.
LINKY Internship
The LINKY Internship was a 4-month internship activity in which I joined the development team of a startup named LINKY, which aimed to develop an online service platform for Koreans abroad. While working as an intern in the development team of LINKY, I not only learned the process and methods to develop an online platform but also gained insight into how startups actually operate and develop their business ideas. Participating in meetings and working in the development process allowed me to grow and attain meaningful experiences.
Pakistan Research Internship Project
The Pakistan Research Internship Project was a summer internship activity in which I worked as an intern for a university research project regarding Pakistan’s Competitiveness in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). For the internship, I contributed to the research by organizing the economic circumstances, ICT industry, key issues and impediments to ICT growth, and current visions and strategies of Pakistan.
2022 6th Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology (UNIST) SuperComputing Youth
The 6th Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology (UNIST) SuperComputing Youth Camp is a camp aimed to promote and encourage the study of programming among high school students in South Korea. Since the UNIST SuperComputing Camp is one of the most prominent national programming camps, admission to the program is highly competitive. My two colleagues and I were selected as the school-representative team for the camp, and we were eventually admitted to this 5-day camp. During the camp, we studied the related concepts regarding Supercomputers, and we also had special discussions regarding the pros and cons of quantum computing and the current quantum computing technologies. We also completed two team projects regarding the topics of Mandelbrot Sets and Machine Learning of Images. As the leader of the team, I contributed to most parts of the programming for both models. Through this camp, I gained experience in complex programming and enhanced my coding abilities for Python.
