SNU College of Engineering becomes a global IT talent training center
-Entering global IT corporations like Google, Facebook, and Amazon


▲ Awards won in international contests

 
SNU College of Engineering is emerging as an IT talent training center coveted by not only domestic, but also global IT corporations
 
Recently, Global IT corporations are preemptively attracting talents in areas like Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, where Korean government and corporations are actively investing. For example, 76 undergraduate and graduate students from Department of Computer Science & Engineering has went overseas, to the US, Europe and China since 2000. They were employed by leading IT giants such as Google (14), Facebook (7), Microsoft (6) and Amazon (3).
 
SNU College of Engineering considers participating and winning international contests as the first reason for increased overseas advancements. Recently, SNU College of Engineering has shown remarkable performance in international contests such as RoboCup, NITRE, and PHM data challenge.
 
Competitions won by SNU engineering teams include robotics, artificial intelligence, navigation system and prognostics. Robotics, Deep Learning and computer programing field including IoT platform grabbed attention as SNU teams were shown to be the world’s best.
 
Prof. Jang Byung-Tak, who won the RoboCup recently, said, “Students who perform well in domestic as well as international contests are receiving love calls from overseas corporations,” and that “these international contests are important opportunities for global corporations to search for talents.”
 
Hong Min-Sung (28), who Joined Facebook after receiving master’s degree in 2014, won the gold medal at the ACM-ICPC Asian qualifier, an international programing contest, by conducting a ‘suffix array of alignment’ research. Facebook actively recruited Hong, a female programmer, by supporting her participation in international conferences.
 
Han Jun-Hee (23), who studied for a master’s degree in SNU until 2015, also majored in computer algorithms, and won a special prize in the ACM-ICPC World Finals for two consecutive years as Korean representative. And after Google’s constant job offer, he joined Google at the US headquarters as a software engineer.
 
The international research capacity of SNU faculty is also an aspect in helping students to compete on the global stage. Huh Ki-Hong (31), who received his Ph. D. from SNU Department of Computer Science and Engineering this year, received a job offer from Facebook after his participation of his professor Lee Kwang-geun and Facebook’s joint project. Mr. Huh is working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.
 
Overseas recruitments of SNU graduates were also active in the past, but the difference is that the global corporations not only offer post-doctoral researchers but also offer undergraduates who show great potentials. A team of 3 undergraduates Choi Seok-Hwan, Yun Ji-Hak and Cho Seung-Hyun won the gold medal at ICPC, the world largest programming contest, and was invited by IBM’s headquarters, the contest’s sponsor. 51445 participants from 2938 universities in 103 countries competed for solving complex programming problems.
 
Cha Kook-Heon, dean of the College of Engineering, said, “The interests from global corporations seeking innovative talents show that SNU College of Engineering is glowing globally,” and that “we will give full support for fostering talents who will lead the 4^th industrial revolution and the development of fundamental technology, and their advancement into the global stage.