IITP, Microsoft collaborate to build global network for fostering AI workers

Participants of the 2025 Korea Day @ MSRA pose during the event at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in Beijing, Tuesday. Front row fifth from left is Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) President Hong Jin-bae, and sixth from left is MSRA Managing Director and Corporate Vice President Lidong Zhou. Courtesy of IITP

A total of 34 Korean artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have successfully announced the results of their internships in a program jointly organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) and Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), aimed at fostering a global AI workforce.

According to the IITP, the three sides jointly held 2025 Korea Day @ MSRA in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, where the interns and MRSA researchers shared their latest achievements.

Participating in the event were IITP President Hong Jin-bae, MSRA Managing Director and Corporate Vice President Lidong Zhou and more than 100 other researchers, professors and participating interns.

In order to train IT workers, the IITP has been running the internship program in cooperation with MSRA since 2011. Among more than 170 graduates, 48 have been hired by leading IT companies in and outside of Korea, 33 have taken faculty positions at top universities such as Seoul National University (SNU) and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and 25 have joined renowned AI research centers and public institutes.

Of them, Hong Ki-beom, who completed the program in 2020, is now a professor at Sookmyung Women’s University’s AI Vision Lab, while Song Eun-woo, who completed in 2016, is Naver Cloud’s Voice Synthesis team lead.

After the program’s renewal in 2024, the IITP sent 21 interns in master’s and doctoral degree courses to MRSA Beijing that year, before expanding the program to 38 interns, including 34 in Beijing and four in Vancouver, this year.

On the academic front, the program has also delivered notable research outcomes, with seven papers published at world-class international conferences in 2024 and eight more in 2025.

Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) Senior Principal Research Manager Yongqiang Xiong, right, questions MSRA intern and Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology doctoral student Choi Sang-jin, left, during a poster session of 2025 Korea Day @ MSRA in Beijing, Tuesday. Courtesy of Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation

During the two-day event, participants showcased their projects on agentic and multimodal AI, as well as ways to improve AI efficiency.

Topics included Value Compass, an experimental evaluation and guidance framework designed to check the alignment of an agent’s goals and its direction of progress; rStar-Agent, an architecture concept that aligns inference and action plans; and BitNet, a large-scale model technique that improves efficiency through low-precision, bit-based computation.

Also at the event, poster and demonstration sessions were held to present Korean intern researchers’ achievements, serving as a chance for officials from MSRA and other institutions to share their opinions.

“It was a great honor to work alongside doctors who are at the forefront of engineering through the MSRA program,” said Park Je-sang, an SNU student and a participant of the program. “The experience has given me strong motivation, and I will continue to push myself so that after graduation I can grow into an AI researcher who can stand on equal footing with them.”

Park’s academic advisor and SNU professor, Park Chong-woo, said the program became “a priceless opportunity for students to do research that is only able to be conducted in companies,” serving as a foundation for fostering a global AI workforce.

Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) President Hong Jin-bae speaks during 2025 Korea Day @ MSRA at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, Tuesday. Courtesy of IITP

The IITP said the program is aimed at promoting research and development on the philosophy of openness, continuity and scalability, and is designed to create a network where students, young researchers, professors and industry can grow together.

The program operates on the principle of making research results public and allows universities that send their students to retain ownership of intellectual property.

The program’s budget for this year was 3 billion won ($2.17 million), up from 2 billion won last year. Microsoft also provides funding, on-site mentoring and research infrastructure support.

“Through Korea Day @ MSRA, young Korean researchers were able to gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge topics such as agentic AI and multimodal AI, demonstrating their achievements on site with world-class researchers,” Hong said.

“With the Ministry of Science and ICT and Microsoft, the IITP will carefully design a virtuous cycle of internships, global joint research and talent development, so that we can take the lead in nurturing core global talent in the AI field,” he said.