Today was Monday, so officially we have had a full week of our trip! Today we went to visit the campus of one of the universities in Korea, POSTECH. Postech recently partnered with Pitt, so we were kind of acting as ambassadors at Pitt. We listened to a presentation all about Postech, met a grad student from Postech who did some research at Pitt, and met a student who is doing an exchange semester at Pitt next fall! Postech is a relatively new school compared to Pitt, the have only existed for about 40 years. They are the first research university in Korea, and there is a cool connection between Pitt and POSTECH. Pohong, the city that POSTECH is in, is a city built on the steel industry, like Pittsburgh. It’s cool to think about the connections that our cities have had that led to the collaboration between the two. Because of this, if I wanted to study abroad for a semester, I would be able to at Postech. After the presentation, we went to eat lunch on campus at their “E-Colluseum,” which is a restaurant with spots for e-sports so that people can watch. While eating, we had the opportunity to connect with students studying at Postech, to learn a little more about their school directly from the students.

After the presentation, we got a tour of some of the labs on campus. One of the labs we toured was a quantum computing lab, which was so cool to see. The computers took up a huge box in the room and have so many different parts to them. They are super expensive computers that are used to perform much more complicated functions than regular computers. We also got to go inside a particle accelerator lab, which is a hugee building that is used to accelerate particles and can be used for so many different applications. I don’t think that ever again in my entire life I will see something as cool as that. We visited 2 different types of labs, a linear accelerator and a circular accelerator. There was so much cool tech that I didn’t really understand at all, but whatever it was, it was so interesting. It really made me realize how much I will be learning in the next 3 years when I get into my real coursework. That was pretty much the end of my day for the day, but it was super fun! See you next time!