Rick Rashid, Senior VP of Microsoft Corporation, receives appreciation plaque from the Korea Ministry of EducationThe Microsoft Research Korea Internship Program, in partnership with the Korea Ministry of Education and Korean government, provides opportunities for outstanding Korean graduate level students in computer science and electronic engineering from leading research universities in Korea.

In recognition of Microsoft Research’s contribution in strengthening educational cooperation with the Korea Ministry of Education, the Vice Minister on behalf of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Ministry of Education and Human Resources presented an appreciation plaque to Rick Rashid, Senior Vice-President of Microsoft Corporation, during a visit to Korea in 2007 (photo on left). The Korea Internship Program was later selected as a best practice of government and industry collaboration by the Korean government.

On This Page

• Program Overview
• Applicant Qualifications
• Annual Selection Process and Criteria
• Application Requirements
• 2011 Korean Interns
• 2010 Korean Interns
• 2009 Korean Interns

Program Overview

Launched in 2006, the Korea Internship Program is managed in conjunction with The Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology with the objective to foster excellent new researchers by providing opportunities to collaborate with top researchers from Microsoft Research on advanced state-of-art technologies. Since 2006, more than 50 talented young students completed internships at the Microsoft Research Asia lab for a six-month period and more than 20 students completed 12-week internships at Microsoft Research headquarters in Redmond. Many Korean interns have published top-class conference papers and journals at various international conferences, such as ICCV-International Conference on Computer Vision, SIGIR-Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, ACL-Association for Computational Linguistics, AAAI-American Association for Artificial Intelligence, MobiCom-Mobile Computing and Networking, COLING-Computational Linguistics, KDD-Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and others, while working at Microsoft Research.

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Applicant Qualifications

The applicants must meet the following conditions:

• Currently registered in a masters or doctoral degree program in a leading research university while majoring in computer science, electronic engineering, or industrial designing.
• Excellent mathematic skills
• Excellent programming and research capabilities
• Excellent English skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills, attitude, behavior
• Excellent team spirit

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Annual Selection Process and Criteria

First Selection

Date: Early June
Application documents are submitted to the program website under the National Research Foundation of Korea or BrainKorea21 project home page in order to be reviewed by the selection committee for the first selection phase. Only those applicants who pass the first selection will be considered for the second selection.

Second Selection

Date: End of June 2011
Location: Microsoft Korea (Seoul)
The second selection results are based on a written or oral test and face-to-face interview. Only those applicants who pass the second selection will be considered for the final selection.

Final Selection

Date: End of July 2011
Location: Phone interview by researchers of Microsoft Research
Final results to be decided by the Microsoft Research Asia selection committee, based on application documents and phone interview.

Extra Selection for Microsoft Research Redmond Internship

Date: End of March 2012
Location: Phone interview by researchers of Microsoft Research
Students who have completed their internship at Microsoft Research Asia are eligible to apply for a second internship at Microsoft Research headquarters in Redmond for a 12-week summer internship. The final candidates are decided based on application documents, evaluation feedback from the internship at Microsoft Research Asia, and phone interview.

Criteria

• High potential for quality research including previous, current or future research interests and projects, well-defined goals and objectives of research, potential to have a significant impact in one or more of the areas of computing
• Academic merit including previous academic records of study and research, scholarships or awards, etc.
• Publications including specific lists or plans for published books, papers, conference presentations, distance learning, etc.
• Relation with Microsoft Research Asia and the research community referring to the match of Microsoft Research areas with the research interests of applicants
• Academic record including academic scores, research experiences, and technical skills
• Mathematics skills
• Computer language skills
• English skills
• Soft skills including passion and motivation, teamwork, and communication

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Application Requirements

Please submit the following documentation during the application period to the program website under The National Research Foundation of Korea or BrainKorea21 project home page.

• Recommendation letter and agreement by academic supervisor
• Curriculum Vitae (C.V.)
• An academic grade report for BS, MS, and PhD
• Video or PowerPoint presentation with audio recorded introduction (on CD) in English, maximum 20 minutes including self-statement; previous, on-going, and future projects; research interests and accomplishments; etc.

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2011 Korean Interns

The 2011 Microsoft Research Asia Korean interns

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2010 Korean Interns

The 2010 Korean interns at Microsoft Research Asia

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2009 Korean Interns

The 2009 Korean interns attend a farewell party at Microsoft Research Asia with mentors, February 2009

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Learn More

• Taking on the Best at Microsoft
• Korea Internship Program Overview Video 

Related Links

• Microsoft Research Intern Alumni Online Community
• Microsoft Research Asia Internship Program
• Microsoft Research Redmond Internship Program
• Korea Homepage

Contact Us

Microsoft Research Asia
6th FL. West Wing, POSCO Center
892, Daechi-Dong, Gangnam-Gu,
Seoul 135-777, Korea

Send us an email message
Tel: (82-2)531-4754
Fax: (82-2)531-4753