This morning was a little rough waking up. I stayed up late writing my blog and calling my sister. Tonight, I still have to do my laundry too. We quickly hopped on the bus and headed out to POSTECH, which stands for Pohang University of Science and Technology. The campus was absolutely beautiful. I can definitely see myself going there as a foreign exchange student through Pitt. We started the tour at the International Relations and watched the presentation for POSTECH by the Industrial Engineering professor. Next, we saw the experiences of the Industrial Engineering graduate student who went to Pitt for research. Then, we heard from the exchange student coming to Pitt, named Cherry, I believe. Lastly, Dr. Yun gave his presentation. We continued the tour by going to the Computer Science & Engineering building and getting a rundown of the department, and also getting a look at some of the research going on. I liked the analysis of youth isolation using the machine learning model to explain the trends through social media. We then visited the quantum computer, which was massive, and all the optical devices were really cool. We ate lunch at the eSports colosseum with POSTECH students who were in the CS department. I sat with the Dumb Squad (myself, Jake, and Nick) and one Postechian. We discussed our colleges, League of Legends, and more. I ordered the cheese tteokbokki, which was nice, but the portion was very small, so I borrowed some pork from Nick and the student there, who graciously offered. I also talked with the transfer student, Cherry, who was very nice. We talked about food, including recommendations in Pitt and about Indian food. After lunch, we continued the tour at the NINTS and PAL. This was one of the best visits we’ve had so far. At the FAB, we were able to see semiconductor manufacturing and also various TEMs and an SEM. I did have a Hitachi SEM in my high school, but it was slated to be returned, and I don’t know what came of it. Next, the PAL was amazing. We first went to PLS2, which housed a circular storage ring for the electron beam. Inductors were able to generate synchrotron radiation, which is much brighter than even sunlight. The PLS-XFEL was a linear accelerator that was over a kilometer long. We had to bus over to get to one end of it from the other end. We also saw various other projects on the tour at different points.

During free time, we went for dinner, trying to get some seafood. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything and just settled for a Chinese bar. We were a giant group of 10, and the server had to put together 3 entire tables to seat all of us. The group consisted of me, along with Sophie, Chris, Emma, Kali, Rohit, Victor, Dom, Nick, and Ben. Will did show up later, but he didn’t eat anything. I ordered Szechuan pork, which was great, though I didn’t realize all the sauce was under the pork, so I did eat a lot of dry pieces before finally getting some with more sauce. We then visited the beach for a little bit before splitting up and heading to Caffe Bene for the second time. I ordered cookies & cream bingsu, but it was so much that I couldn’t even finish it (it also melted). I’m excited to head back to POSTECH and then visit POSCO, the founding steel company of the school. Pohang and POSCO are mostly analogous to US Steel and Pittsburgh.

SUS