Sungwon Kim, who is pursuing his PhD degree at SNU Department of ECE in the College of Engineering, is starting his internship in the upcoming summer at NVIDIA Applied Deep Learning Research situated in San Jose, California, U.S.A. Throughout the interview, he could not conceal his excitement. It was because he had obtained the opportunity to dive into the wider world he had yearned for.

Kim remarked that he chose to go to Silicon Valley for the ‘open-mindedness’ of American developers. After finishing his undergraduate course, he invested three months to obtain experience in the Silicon Valley. He explained that he packed to go without any specific plans simply because he heard that he would be able to meet famous AI developers. Kim said, “Although I was just a backpacker, I could participate in ‘meetups’ with no difficulty. For the entire three months, I wandered through meetups thrilled to meet up and discuss with famous figures whose names I had encountered in course textbooks.”

Last November, Kim submitted a paper online that was on AI text-to-speech technology, and this attracted attention from AI developers. This was because its content could be applied to significantly improve the performance of ‘WaveNet’, which was developed by DeepMind, Google’s AI developing company. WaveNet possesses a technology that can synthesize audio to be as natural as human speech. However, it takes a long time to synthesize the audio. With the technology contained in Kim’s paper, the speed of synthesis can be increased up to a 100 times.

When word of the paper reached Bryan Catanzaro, NVIDIA Vice President of Applied Deep Learning Research, he made a move himself. After reviewing the paper, he offered a job to Kim. Within a month after the publication of the paper, the employment was decided.

Kim commented that most of his friends with an engineering degree are absorbed in the ‘Silicon Valley dream’. He explains that there is no reason to insist on employment in major Korean companies if one considers both growth opportunities and employment terms. After the internship, Kim has to return to Korea for now. He has to complete his army service. He said, “After I fulfill my military duty, I will again aim for the Silicon Valley.”

Source: http://ee.snu.ac.kr/community/news?bm=v&bbsidx=48443
Translated by: Jee Hyun Lee, English Editor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, jlee621@snu.ac.kr