Kim Kyu-kwang

A 17-year-old high school senior has managed to get an article published in a science journal listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded. This is especially surprising since he attends a foreign-language high school and studied science on his own.

Kim Kyu-kwang of Daeil Foreign Language High School has a paper titled "Protein interaction network related to Helicobacter pylori infection response" published in the latest edition of the World Journal of Gastroenterology. The article is the product of three years of hard work.

Kyu-kwang has loved science since he was in middle school, but he decided to go to a foreign language high school because he felt it would be more useful if he wanted to study abroad. As soon as he started high school, he immersed himself in the world of science. All his self-study hours and weekends were devoted to his scientific endeavors.

When he could not figure out answers to questions on his own, he sought help from a university. He sent an email to a medical professor at Seoul National University and asked to be accepted as an intern in a lab and got a chance to observe experiments in the diagnostic microbiology lab at SNU during the summer and winter vacations of his first year. As soon as the supplementary classes at school were over, he ran over to the lab, where he stayed until 10 p.m. every day.

Because he was so focused on science, Kyu-kwang was a little negligent in preparing for school and university entrance exams. But he says, "I'm so happy to be doing what I really like to do, rather than studying stuff that other people tell me to. I want to continue study science and work in bio-informatics." Kim has applied for early admission at SNU, POSTECH and KAIST.