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Graduate Student Spotlight: Hyowon Seo

Categories: Students

Chemistry Graduate Student Hyowon Seo describes her research and answers 20 random questions as part of the Graduate Student Spotlight series.

Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Hyowon Seo is a fourth year graduate student in Professor Tim Jamison‘s group, where her research focuses on developing chemical methods in continuous flow. Hyowon’s specific approaches include the photoredox activation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and reductive couplings of unactivated reactants in continuous flow.

As the subject of the first Graduate Student Spotlight of 2019, Hyowon shares the the piece of entertainment she’d like to be able to experience again for the first time, the thing she would most like to master, the movie title that best describes her life, and more!

  1. What are you most looking forward to in the next 10 years?
    Graduation and getting a job.
  2. What’s the best book or series that you’ve ever read?
    The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei
  3. What’s something you’ve been meaning to try but just haven’t gotten around to it?
    Studying German and Spanish.
  4. What piece of entertainment do you wish you could erase from your mind so that you could experience for the first time again?
    I would like to watch the Saw movie series without knowing the ending.
  5. What are your top three favorite cities in the world?
    Seoul, Dubrovnik, and Boston.
  6. What weird or useless talent do you have?
    I can move my ears.
  7. What smell brings back great memories?
    The smell of ramen stew. It makes me feel warm in winter.
  8. What’s the best TV show that is currently airing? What’s your favorite TV show of all time?
    Game of Thrones and Game of Thrones.
  9. What are your top three favorite movies?
    Love Actually, Interstellar, and La La Land.
  10. Why did you decide to do the work you are doing now?
    I like making somethings for myself with my hands. I found making molecules is fun!
  11.  What do you hope never changes?
    My family.
  12. If you suddenly became a master at something, what would you want it to be?
    Rap.
  13.  What’s something that really annoys you, but doesn’t seem to bother most people?
    Musk perfumes.
  14. If you could make one rule that everyone had to follow, what rule would you make?
    No shoes in my house.
  15. What is the scariest monster you could imagine?
    A gremlin.
  16. What is your guilty pleasure?
    Diet Coke.
  17. If you could pick any career other than the one you’ve chosen, what would it be?
    A songwriter or comics artist.
  18. What bit of trivia do you know that is very interesting but also very useless?
    The single vowel longest English word is: Strengths.
  19. What movie title best describes your life?
    Frozen. It is so cold in Seoul and Boston.
  20. What did you think you would grow out of but haven’t?
    Removing my skin around my fingernails. I can’t stop!

Many thanks to Hyowon for these thoughtful answers! Stay tuned for more Graduate Student Spotlights in the months to come!