Greetings, Readers!

Welcome aboard! This is my first blog post on this brand new blog, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jack Rosette, and I am a nuclear engineering student entering my Junior year at the University of Michigan. Right now I'm located in Ann Arbor, but I rotate between there and Troy, MI, in terms of a hometown. I must disagree with my friend GaRam; Ann Arbor is a wonderful place in the summer, and I've always found things to do. I prefer it vastly to Troy, but I suppose that shouldn't be much of a surprise... there's things to do in Ann Arbor.

So since GaRam got to do the very first post, there isn't much I can tell you about the program that you don't already know from him. The U-SURF program gives us the opportunity to do research under a UNIST professor in a laboratory setting for a full month, as well become immersed in the Korean culture and language. The program lasts 6 weeks, and the first two will be spent in what is described as "survival Korean," a class that will attempt to give us a basic understanding of the language. I'm not really sure how I'll do... the only language I've ever studied is Spanish, and even then I wasn't particularly good. My goal is to pick up enough to not embarrass myself while trying to converse.

After that comes the research. There were only a few projects offered that had directly applicable research for a nuclear engineering student, but I was fortunate enough to be selected to my first choice. I will be researching under Dr. Hyungjoon Cho, an Assistant Professor at UNIST in the School of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering Department. While that doesn't exactly sound nuclear, Dr. Cho is the lead researcher at the Biomedical Imaging Sciences (BIS) Lab at UNIST (homepage: http://sites.google.com/site/bislabunist/home), and was awarded his Ph. D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering at M.I.T. in 2005. I am very excited to work with science and techniques that are related to my studies, and even more excited to get my first practical lab experience. I hope to learn a lot from the time I spend in the lab next month.

Next month indeed. I take off on June 16, and the program goes from June 18-July 31. Research itself doesn't start until the 4th of July, which I actually didn't realize until just now. I guess I should plan on wearing something obnoxiously American to mark the occasion.

And now, pictures!

Ulsan Industrial District. Home of the corporate conglomerate of Hyundai, Ulsan is the industrial hub of South Korea.

This is a pretty sweet shot of a bridge over some rocks at Ulsan. Since it is a coastal city, I anticipate a visit to a beach or two.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

-Jack Rosette