On International Women’s Day last March 8, The KAIST Herald had the chance to interview Professor Meeyoung Cha, a female professor from the School of Computing and an accomplished researcher in the field of data science. A KAIST alumna herself, Professor Cha talked about her experience as a woman in STEM, her career and achievements, and being part of a group of ten female leaders who recently donated more than 100 million KRW for the inclusive development of KAIST.

Please introduce yourself.

I’m a faculty member at the KAIST School of Computing, and I also graduated from KAIST with my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science. I’ve been at KAIST for around 20 years now, so I’m really fond of our school! I also previously worked as a visiting professor at Facebook and as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

You have received many honors for your work as a data scientist, most recently the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) Test of Time Award in 2020. Tell us about why your work is so important and recognized.

I won that award for a paper I co-wrote back in 2010 called “Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy”, which continues to be my most-cited work even now because it was one of the first of its kind to tackle the topic of influence on social media. But social media isn’t my only interest. I’m a chief investigator at the Institute of Basic Science (IBS), where we bring AI, machine learning, and data science to solve challenging problems — not just in social sciences like poverty mapping and fake news detection, but also in natural sciences like climate prediction and protein folding. We’re doing a lot of interdisciplinary research, and I describe my research field as actionable basic science: connecting data science methodology to problems across different fields.

Although you are now quite accomplished in your work, there still aren’t too many women like you in the field of STEM and computer science. What has your experience been like in this male-dominated field?

I’ve always been one of the few women in the room. At IBS, I’m the only female chief investigator. When I was a student, I was the only woman in my research lab until others joined later on. I was also the first woman to win the Young Information Scientist Award from the Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers. I always quickly adjusted to the mostly male groups that I’m in, but I used to think about how I should behave or what I should wear. Whenever I went to a meeting, I wondered where I should sit. Should I sit at the table, or should I sit at the back? But I may also have benefited a lot since I stood out more, which opened me up to more opportunities. That was then; now, I care less about my place, behavior, and appearance as a woman and more about growing as a person and making the best out of my life.

Female students at KAIST may consider you a role model for paving the way for them. Who was your role model whom you looked up to and admired?

When I started my Ph.D., the School of Computing just had its first female faculty member, Professor Sue Moon. I was so happy to see a female researcher in the department; I jumped at the chance to become her first Ph.D. student. I was really lucky to have her as my adviser, and she shared a lot of her experiences working abroad and in Korea. Another famous interdisciplinary researcher in computational social science is Lada Adamic, whom I got to work with at Facebook. She’s so down-to-earth, and I loved my time there with her.

This month, you and nine other female leaders in different professions donated 115 million KRW to the KAIST Committee on Social Inclusion. How did this come about, and what is it for?

It was initiated by Professor Sukyoung Ryu from the School of Computing and Director Soonmin Bae of the KT AI2XL Research Center, who are both KAIST alumni. In fact, I think most donors graduated from KAIST or are related to the school in some way. They decided to gather women leaders to donate to KAIST for the purpose of growing even more female leaders; because so many were interested, they managed to gather willing donors within just a few hours. I was contacted by Professor Ryu, and I immediately agreed even if I didn’t really have free money lying around. I felt like the most junior member of the group since I didn’t have a big title like the others. Still, I wanted to be involved because I’ve had a lot of privileges in my life, but I also know what it feels like to be a minority. I wanted to give back to those who might not be getting the same opportunities and privileges.

Finally, what are some words of advice you could give to female students at KAIST who want to succeed like you?

Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet. We, as women, tend to block opportunities in advance because we think we might be busy over the next few years — we might get married, we might have children, and so on. But if you really want something, just go for it, and everything will fall into place. My current position at IBS is such a great opportunity, and I applied for it when I was still pregnant with my second child. I was preparing for the interview just two weeks after I gave birth. I just went for it, and somehow it worked out! So don’t worry about all the what-ifs. And be present. Don’t sit at the back, sit at the table. Say the first comment. You don’t need somebody else’s permission. Step up and lead — there’s no shame in that.