Hi! I'm Jane Im. I am a final-year Ph.D. candidate and a Meta Research PhD Fellow (selected on my fourth try) at the University of Michigan School of Information and Department of Computer Science & Engineering.
Before coming to Michigan, I was born and grew up mainly in South Korea. I finished my undergraduate studies at Korea University,
majoring in Business and Computer Science.
I learned about Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) when I was visiting MIT, and was drawn to it because of my interdisciplinary interests and background.
If you want to chat about anything related to research and academia, please send me an email. I am passionate about mentoring—I organized the first panel at CHI on improving PhD advising relationships. I am particularly interested in helping students from underrepresented groups.
If you are curious, I discussed my research journey and interests in this interview with Abigail Mcfee, who's a wonderful interviewer and writer: Jane Im’s mission to advance affirmative consent in tech
Ever since I went to school, I've received a lot of questions about my name because it's not a common Korean name. In the United States, many people ask if "Jane" is my "real name." Long story short, it's both my Korean name and English name. "제인" is how you would typically write "Jane" in Korean. For example, "Jane Austen" is "제인 오스틴" in Korean. The pronunciation of "제" roughly matches to "Ja" and "인" roughly matches to "ne." There's a behind story on how my parents got the idea, but in essence, they thought 제인 (Jane) is good for both. My parents also matched Chinese characters to the name (which is pretty common in Korea)—I personally like the meaning of my name.