Why I do ECE
When I was 9 years old, IBM XT 286 was appear in South Korea. My father bought it to me even though my family was not rich. My father barely graduated elementary school because South Korea was just after the Korean War when my father was young. My father has no knowledge about computer but he thought that I must learn computer. I learnt BASIC programming from the computer educational institute that is near my elementary school. In my home South Korea, IBM XT 286 is still there but it cannot work because I disassembled it when I was 13 years old. It’s a good experience for understanding the computer hardware but I cannot reassemble the computer. After I became middle school student, I quitted my enjoyment of playing computer. However, the experience that my father gave me remains as a valuable asset for my study and I can say that IBM XT 286 is the first step that makes me do "ECE".
When I was an undergraduate student at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, my major is ECE. My grade is excellent until I met electromagnetics. I was seriously concerned about my future just because of Electromagnetics. However, I found out that ECE contains various areas and I exclude the ECE areas related to electromagnetics. My favorite class was the computer networks and the text book "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach(image)" is one of few books that I read more than once.
In Pohang University of science and technology, South Korea, I joined the Multimedia Communication and Network Lab. During the first year, I was working on TI's OMAP 2430 board for project demonstration. The given time to prepare is only three months. The result was far from satisfaction even though the demonstration went well. I was disappointed with myself. I try to overcome that failure until graduate POSTECH. At the end of master course, I got the chance to demonstrate my work for two years in public. My demonstration (demo) is successful and I can recover my confidence. I thanks to Prof. Song who was my adviser in POSTECH for his support.
I researched the cell network simulator for WiMAX (image) when I was an undergraduate student. When I was graduate student in South Korea, my research areas are channel coding including Fountain code, video codec, and wireless communications(image). I think that I can enjoy my researches because there are lots of interesting research fields in "ECE".
Now in Purdue, my research area moves to social networks owing to the variety of ECE that I choose.
- Sangchun Han
