A scientist makes a donation to help foster female scientists

A young Korean scientist is gaining attention for donating his entire lecture fees to a domestic social venture that supports female scientists.

The hero is Dr. Cho Kyung-hyun, an assistant professor of Computer Science and Data Science at New York University. On June 11 and 12, when he visited Korea for a joint study, he lectured on “processing natural language using deep learning,” at the podium at the Naver headquarters located in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province with the invitation of the Connect Foundation. It was a large-scale lecture targeting some 200 people, which lasted for eight hours.

As much as the event was an invitation of a foreign scholar, the lecture fee amounted to 10 million won. Dr. Cho, however, generously donated the entire fees to “Girl’s Robot,” a social venture, to support potential female scientists and graduate students.

“I have always thought that it is a problem not just in Korea but also in the United States that females are not active enough in the science and engineering sector,” said the professor. The “Machine Learning 101” class that he opened for undergraduate studies at New York University accommodates 70 students but the number of female students is rare.

Dr. Cho decided to make a donation because he thought that the situation in Korea would be worse. “Many processors in the United States are making efforts to narrow the gap in terms of region and race by visiting local areas and providing lectures for a few weeks every year for the development of science and engineering in Africa,” he said. “I was also influenced by my fellow colleagues as well.”


ashilla@donga.com