Follow-up donation after 2 years

after receiving the Samsung Ho-Am Prize 2.5 years ago (early 2021), i made a few small donations here and there; i donated approximately \$85,000 to KAIST to establish a small scholarship for female students in computer science in honour of my mom, \$85,000 to Soongsil University for my dad who since then has retired from Soongsil University after more than 30 years there as a professor of korean literature and language, €30,000 EUR to Aalto University’s computer science for establishing a small scholarship to support non-EU students, \$30,000 CAD to Mila, and \$50,000 USD to CIFAR for supporting female researchers

[NeurIPS’22] Chasing reviewers

as some of you may have noticed, i was one of the program chairs of NeurIPS’22 which just ended last Friday (December 9 2022). it was a two-week-long conference with the first week being in person in New Orleans which was followed by the virtual week. program chairs were mostly tasked with running the review process for the main track of the conference and inviting keynote speakers, and there were other organizing committee members who have taken care of various other aspects of the conference, including expos, workshops, tutorials, datasets and benchmark track, social events, affinity workshops and many more,

Donation to “청포도” 보호종료아동을 위한 커뮤니티 케어 센터

Prof. Sukyoung Ryu, who’s the Dean of School of Computing at KAIST (my alma mater) and a professor of computer science, posted on her facebook wall about a donation campaign by the “Green Grapes” Community Care Center for Children Graduating from Social Protection Program (“청포도” 보호종료아동을 위한 커뮤니티 케어 센터; i just made up this translation and am sure it doesn’t do the justice to the original Korean name.) this center’s main mission is to provide various educational programs as well as run support programs for those who are exiting social support systems for minors, such as foster homes, group

My opening statement at the ICML 2022 Debate

i was honoured to participate in the ICML Debate 2022 on the topic of <Progress towards achieving AI will be mostly driven by engineering not science>. the debate was in the British Parliamentary Style which i was not familiar with at all but found interesting. i was assigned to the opposition party and was designated as the “leader”, which meant i had to open the debate from the opposition side following the opening from the proposition. the proposition party consisted of Sella Nevo, Maya R. Gupta and François Charton. Been Kim was unfortunately unable to participate, although she would’ve been

외할머니

이제서야 (외)할머니 산소에 들렀습니다. 작년 (2021) 어느날 그냥 문득 어머니께 전화을 드리고 싶어서 영상전화를 드렸는데 황급히 걸어가시면서 조금 있다가 전화하겠다며 끊으셨습니다. 글쎄요. 조금 싸한 느낌이 들었는데 곧 어머니께서 다시 전화를 걸으셨고 병원 1층에서 휠체어를 타고 입원하시는 할머니와 아주 짧은 통화를 했습니다. 어째 마음이 무거워서 오히려 통화를 제대로 못 했는데, 그 통화가 할머니와의 마지막 통화였네요. 언제나 호탕하시고 유쾌하셨던 할머니께서는 한결 같이 저와 통화를 하시면 꼭 두 가지 얘기를 하셨습니다. 하나는 제가 어릴 때 어찌나 서럽게 쉬지 않고 밤낮으로 울었다는 것이었습니다. 저야 애기 때니 기억은 안 나지만 얼마나 울어댔길래 다른 최근 기억은 세월에 잊혀지면서도 이 이야기는 안 잊혀졌던 것 일까요. 이제 할아버지