Summer 2018 Undergraduate Research Internship

What is this about?

I’m looking for a few undergraduate research interns to join KIXLAB this summer.

What does your lab do?

As an HCI research group, we build interactive systems that are powered by large-scale data from users. As a research field, HCI strives to tackle real world problems that users face everyday. We pride in building technical solutions that can directly help real world users. A typical research process is to observe users, identify their challenges, come up with a novel technical solution, and evaluate the solution with rigorous research methods.

Check out our latest papers for examples.

What will I be working on?

You’ll be working on one of the on-going research projects in the lab. As an intern, you will closely interact with graduate students working on the project and me.

Please make sure to read this document for the detailed descriptions of available projects, required skills, and expected benefits. For a quick summary, we’re looking for interns for the following projects:

• [Project #1] Emotion-aware Responses for Conversational Agents

• [Project #2] A Conversational Agent for Learning Korean

• [Project #3] Toward a More Natural Conversation with a Chatbot

• [Project #4] Crowd+Machine Hybrid Approach for Video Annotation

• [Project #5] Novel Learnersourcing Application

• [Project #6] Content-based Editing Support for Informational Videos

• [Project #7] Improving Government Transparency with Social Computing

• [Project #8] Enhancing Science News Readers’ Understanding of Scientific Knowledge

What skills / experiences do I need?

• I’m looking for motivated students who like to (learn to) build interactive systems for real users.
• I’m looking for proactive students who explore and figure out directions on their own.
• I’m looking for strong finishers. Rough ideas are cheap. Realized ideas are not.
• I’m looking for students who have intro-level HCI knowledge or have taken CS374/CS472 at KAIST. This is not a requirement, but is strongly recommended.

I’m not a KAIST student. Can I apply?

Yes.

I’m a graduate student. Can I apply?

Yes, but your advisor should be supportive of the idea.

How competitive is it to get an internship?

For the past year, the acceptance rate was around 20%.

Why should I do this?

• Because you’ll be working on something really exciting
• Because you’ll design and build something for real world users
• Because you’ll gain a hands-on research experience
• Because you’ll have a chance to interact with fantastic HCI students and faculty at KAIST

Okay, I’m sold. What are the conditions?

• Period: June - August 2018 with flexible start and end dates. Preference will be given to students who are interested in extending the internship through the fall. This is not a requirement, however.
• At the end of the summer, we’ll discuss the possibility of extending the internship through the fall semester. The decision will depend on your progress, fit with me and the group, and level of interest, among other things.
• Flexible working hours, but I expect interns to spend 40 hours on the project per week.
• Personal office space in N1 with standing desks!
• Infinite amount of free coffee
• You’ll be paid a reasonable salary.
• If you’re a CS undergrad at KAIST, we can discuss connecting the internship to CS490 (Research in Computer Science) or CS495 (Individual Study). URP is another option that I like.

How can I apply?

Please apply by sending an email to juhokim@kaist.ac.kr until April 29, 2018 (Sunday). Your application should include the following:

• Name of the project you want to work on, and a one-paragraph statement about why it interests you and what you plan to contribute. Please pick from the list of projects presented above. You can pick more than one project if you want to, but you need to provide a statement for each.
• Your resume or CV that includes your technical skillset and any research experience.
• A copy of your transcript (unofficial or scanned version is fine).