Testimonial Essay _  Justin Lim Wei Xiang from Nanyang Technological University

The CAMPUS Asia Spring Research Oriented Program provided an incredibly fulfilling and inspiring experience from the science learned and performed, to meeting new people with different worldviews and learning from them.

Just before finding out about this program, I was amid deciding whether to apply for overseas graduate programs. The invitation to participate in this KAIST spring research program provided me with a chance to experience research abroad and with a chance to join a different group to learn and expand my skillset, helping me gather datapoints to decide on whether to travel overseas for post-graduate studies. Also, many good things about KAIST were told to me by a postdoctoral researcher in my research group who did his undergraduate and doctoral studies in the department of chemistry in KAIST helped me decide in joining the program and experiencing research in KAIST.

In this research-oriented program, I was assigned to the Ultrafast Lasers and Photonics Laboratory (ULPL) led by Professor Fabian Rotermund for two months to experience and perform research in his laboratory. During this program, I was tasked with preparing transition metal dichalcogenide samples through mechanical exfoliation, characterizing them with optical microscopy and Raman measurements, performing sample transfer to substrates of choice for experiments and running transient absorption spectroscopy measurements on Methyl ammonium lead tri-iodide samples. Alongside these main focuses of the program, Prof. Fabian also ensured that I was introduced and had some experience in all the different projects and experiments that his students were undertaking.

From this program, I have learnt many new things that were previously just theoretical knowledge from reading literatures, from the intricacies in exfoliating samples and to understanding how a TAS setup works to probe the carrier dynamics of materials, allowing me to have a greater appreciation of the techniques used in experiments and a greater appreciation of the various excited state phenomenon observed in the experiments.

For this entire program, I really enjoyed being able to interact with students in KAIST be it through the research group, or with the KAIST buddy and other students participating in the research program, as seen in the photos above.

This was particularly fruitful for me because I was able to learn more about their culture and their language when interacting with them. Additionally, I was extremely inspired by the PhD students in the research group from their passion for their research topics. Moreover, interacting with them expanded my worldview as we were able to share our different experiences in education, research and lifestyle in general.

The language lessons provided were also extremely interesting and they provided me with a deeper appreciation of Korean language, which I am inspired to continue learning the language after returning to my home university.

All in all, the program was not just about research in the lab, but was equally about the culture experienced overseas and new people met outside of the lab. I personally find that this program has really impacted me in the sense that I am more driven than ever to pursue research as a career in the future, and that I will not only be considering doing a postgraduate degree in Singapore but also abroad.

I would like to show my appreciation to Ms Hyelim Bae and Ms Hyunjeong Lee, for organizing the outing to Jeonju for a fun experience and taking excellent care of us throughout our stay in KAIST. I find that the research program was more fulfilling because of them, inside and outside of the lab.

At the same time, I would like to show my heartfelt thanks to Prof Fabian Rotermund and all the members in ULPL, Junho Park, Seong Eun Lim, Eon-Taek Oh, Ji Eun Bae, Chaeyoon Kim, In-Cheol Yu, Deok Woo Kim, Seong Cheol Lee and Tae Gwan Park for the warm hospitality in the research group and the guidance and teaching provided.