Jason Cho

His first taste of real engineering was when his uncle regularly came down to Han River on a monthly basis, which ran a couple miles away from where he lived, to undertake remediation work and collect samples for later analyses at a research lab. As an environmental engineer, he showed Jason how important his work was for not only the environment but for every sector of society that depended on its environmental services. Jason admired him and it was at this point when he decided to become an engineer who’d not just work towards serving their own scientific self-interests/inquiries, but become one who takes into account the larger contributions to his local community and beyond into the general scope of humanity. This thought didn’t change even once Jason later laid his feet in Syracuse, NY.

He went to Fayetteville–Manlius High School in suburban Syracuse, NY and there, really started to explore all aspects of engineering. He first joined an engineering outreach non-profit group called Youth Engineering Initiative (Y.E.I.) As a team, they brought hands-on activities to various downtown Syracuse locations where many children haven’t had much prior experience with STEM. Alongside the members, the taskforce organized and held summer camps for children coming from refugee families through the catholic youth organization. Since Jason joined YEI as a project manager and later as the Co-President, they had the privilege of serving more than 2500 youths encompassing the greater Central New York area. He also joined Science Olympiad and as a team, they mostly competed at the regional level. Furthermore, he volunteered at his local museum for more than 800 hours where he demonstrated different hands-on daily science activities, led summer camps, volunteered at the museum’s ham radio station, and explained how science goes into play behind experiments and activities.

However, the single most activity that contributed to his engineering experience during high school was his lab research experience at nearby colleges and research centers. In his sophomore year, he interned at a future innovative research facility in downtown Syracuse called the Center of Excellence (C.O.E) where he researched and collected samples from urban green roofs. From there, he started to ask himself if it’s possible to use the drainage water from urban green roofs to irrigate nearby urban vegetation. That would lead to massive chemical, biological, and environmental benefits in the urban area such as enhanced water management, reduced nearby waterbody pollutions, reduced urban food dependency from distant rural areas, better usage of resources, etc.

To find the answer to his, at first, seemingly unresolvable question, he decided to go to nearby science labs at Syracuse University and at SUNY ESF (State University of New York Environmental Science and Forestry) to come up with a prototype for this urban drainage system given that it will work. Jason visited three labs with three different purposes to identify the feasibility of my idea. He first researched at Professor Driscoll’s lab in Syracuse University in order to see what common chemicals compose urban green roof drainage and what hazardous chemicals need to be targeted and removed. From his time at Professor Driscoll’s engineering lab, Jason found out that toxic metals such as chromium, zinc, and cadmium were prevalent which all had potentially devastating effects for vegetation.

After he got a better understanding of the chemical composition of the drainage water, he then thought about ways to remove those toxic heavy metals from the water. This step led him to Professor Fernando and Professor Leems’ labs at SUNY ESF. At Professor Fernando’s lab, he focused on the possibility of phytoremediation, using plants to uproot certain metals from the soil, to remove the common toxic metals found from the previous lab. From his time there, Jason specifically learned how to spike samples with specific concentrations of metal and how to perform analysis on plant tissues. Lastly at Dr. Leem’s chemistry lab, he looked at using nanoparticles such as Sn02 and TiO2 nanorods to adsorb and reduce Chromium +6 to +3. After doing research at these three respective labs, he came up with a prototype that provided a comprehensive heavy metal removal system utilizing phytoremediation and nanoparticle adsorption while delivering the much-needed nutrients to the final vegetation. After going through trials, this system proved to be feasible with significant rates of decrease in toxic metal concentrations in the final drainage that’s delivered to the vegetation meanwhile simultaneously delivering beneficial macronutrients to the plants for growth.

Through his experience, Jason was able to present his findings at the local, state, and international level. He got 2nd place at the 2018 International Building Physics Conference (IBPC 2018) Research Poster Competition, presented at the Intel ISEF Science Fair in the Environmental Engineering category, and became the Grand Winner for the New York State Ying Scholar Oral Presentation. He also had the opportunity to go to different colleges and research institutions to present what he learned and discovered.

As an extra license class radio operator, in his free time, he likes to do ham radio related stuff such as the FT-8 digital mode where he completed contacting people from all across 50 states and now working to contact people from 100 countries. He also likes reading, working out, beatboxing, procrastinating, getting with friends for just a casual talk, binge watching on YouTube for hours upon hours, and getting involved with environmental activism.

In his later years in high school, suffering from it a little bit himself as well, he decided that he wanted to research the intersection between engineering and helping people who are suffering from mental illnesses. Although he’s relatively new to the biomedical field that pertains to neuroscience and psychiatric disorders, as he saw people around him suffering greatly from various mental illnesses such as depression, which worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic, he wanted to study this field and possibly look into ways of using engineering along this new pathway. Therefore, through his time at Columbia Engineering, he hopes to pursue Biomedical Engineering on the pre-med track to possibly later work in the medical field to directly help psychiatric patients with engineering tools to lead the way.