The sense of help and neighborhood was palpable. Park Seo Joona postdoctoral fellow on the MIT Middle for Worldwide Research (CIS), gave a current presentation on the worldwide proliferation of AI expertise and its political drivers. Occasions which are a part of CIS Global Research Policy Seminarthe venue was crammed with viewers members from throughout MIT.
“My work is instantly linked to what CIS college have been doing on worldwide commerce and safety,” Park stated afterward. “If I hadn’t come to MIT with a postdoctoral fellowship, I would not have been capable of assume by the safety implications of mental property analysis. I have been very impressed by these students.”
Park’s time at CIS was each foundational and transformative, offering a tutorial house that helped form his analysis and broaden his mental horizons.
Pursuing interdisciplinary analysis and connections
Earlier than taking the tenure-track place, Park had set his sights on doing analysis at MIT. When he discovered a public put up about CIS Postdoctoral Associate Programhe took an opportunity and utilized.
“My very own analysis is interdisciplinary, and I knew I may actually profit from the interdisciplinary surroundings at MIT, particularly at CIS, which brings collectively college from political science in addition to the economics division and MIT Sloan. [School of Management]” he says.
Park was thrilled to obtain a paid fellowship that offered her with a 12 months at MIT and devoted workplace house at CIS. At MIT, I worth liberating up my time to do my very own analysis and pursue matters of curiosity to the CIS neighborhood, whether or not it is AI or international governance. He printed prolifically alongside the way in which, together with; Worldwide group opinions and Overview of worldwide political financial system.
He’s additionally engaged on a forthcoming ebook, From Privilege to Prosperity: Information Diffusion and the World Governance of Mental Property, which examines how expertise will be legally transferred throughout borders. “By ‘authorized,’ I am asking below what circumstances would firms voluntarily share their expertise? I am within the establishments and institutional environments that enable giant firms to share their expertise with small and medium-sized firms primarily based within the growth world who do not have the power to give you their very own expertise,” he explains.
Within the spring semester of 2026, the middle will Undergraduate Fellows Program. This program permits postdocs to work on analysis tasks with MIT undergraduate college students. Park is working with two CIS undergraduate college students to develop a brand new dataset to look at worldwide commerce in inexperienced applied sciences. This chance brings Park again to his early tutorial experiences in South Korea, which set him on the trail to MIT.
The highway to MIT
“Korean college students are skilled to be drawback solvers,” explains Park, who was born and raised in Seoul. The nation’s rigorous college entrance exams reward those that can reply probably the most questions shortly and precisely inside a restricted time.
Throughout a highschool take a look at, Park stumbled upon a query he could not reply regardless of how arduous he concentrated. He submitted the examination, however took the questions house and considered them for hours. He simply could not let go of the issue. “Trying again, I believe this was the second I made a decision I wished to change into a tutorial,” Park says.
Whereas majoring in Worldwide Research and Economics (Statistics) at Korea College, I had the chance to take part in a semester-long trade program on the College of Texas at Austin. So Park enrolled in a political science course on recreation principle, which explores how the choices of particular person state actors have an effect on one another’s selections and outcomes in commerce, battle, and diplomacy. The trainer used the continued battle between North and South Korea as a case examine to exhibit the distinctive scenario of escalation or de-escalation relying on what selections the key events make alongside the way in which.
“For the primary time, I noticed how quantitative strategies might be utilized to worldwide relations and political financial system,” Park says. And I knew my subsequent step can be to pursue graduate work in the US. He started a joint grasp’s and doctoral diploma program in political science at Princeton College the next 12 months with the help of a Fulbright Fellowship.
Park’s 2025 dissertation, which examined the worldwide governance of mental property rights, was well timed. He began his doctoral program in 2018, “simply because the U.S.-China commerce battle was beginning.” Throughout the pandemic, he was moved by the continued debate about vaccine inequities. “That is once I realized that mental property was on the coronary heart of those international financial challenges.” Though there was little analysis in political science on the subject, he “got down to create a scientific framework” to review it.
On the identical time, I served as a instructing assistant for an undergraduate statistical evaluation course and located that I actually loved the expertise of instructing and interacting with college students. It was a totally totally different expertise from his personal faculty days.
“In South Korea, the educational surroundings is often only a professor lecturing, however within the U.S. increased schooling system, I discovered the classroom to be really interactive. I discovered one thing from every scholar.” Quickly, Park knew that he not solely wished to construct a profession in tutorial analysis, but additionally a future targeted on instructing and mentoring college students.
Earlier than graduating, he spent one 12 months at Georgetown College as a predoctoral fellow affiliated with the Mortara Middle for Worldwide Affairs. This expertise allowed him to discover the coverage implications of his analysis and have interaction with policymakers in Washington, expertise that he’ll use in his new position.
Lasting classes from CIS
Mr. Park just lately accepted a place as an assistant professor on the Nationwide College of Singapore. Beginning in fall 2026, he’ll supervise graduate college students within the Faculty of Public Coverage, most of whom may have prior profession expertise as practitioners within the public or non-public sector.
The brand new tutorial hub will be taught quite a bit from MIT, he says. “I’ll construct on what I discovered in the US to make the educational surroundings within the graduate programs I educate extra interactive and collaborative.”
In CIS, Mihaela Papaanalysis director and principal investigator, and evan libermanThe middle’s director and professor of political science linked Park with associated college whose analysis pursuits had been associated to his personal. “Assembly with teachers whose analysis is expounded to mental property rights indirectly made me take into consideration how my very own pursuits might be prolonged to different matters,” Park explains.
However the largest takeaway was that he discovered how one can share his analysis with teachers finding out unfamiliar matters, trade concepts, and discover frequent floor. “I’ll by no means cease utilizing the communication expertise I gained right here at MIT,” Park says.
