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The spotlight is on Professor Sungja Choi, Gachon University, South Korea.

Gachon University, located in the Seoul metropolitan district of South Korea, was established in 2012 through the merger of four private universities. It has 14 colleges, eight schools, 46 departments, and approximately 22,000 students as of early 2025. Since 2016, software education has been mandatory for all students, coordinated by the College of IT Convergence, which focuses on the intersection of information technology and business processes.

Gachon University was the first in Korea to establish an artificial intelligence teaching unit: the Department of AI Software. A subsection of the department, the Gachon Software Academy, collaborates with the Ministry of Science and ICT in support of the government’s Software Professional Talent Development Project, whose objective is to generate high quality talent with which to nurture the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, interacting with all areas of government and industry.

Professor Sungja Choi is an adjunct professor in the Department of AI Software. She also oversees collaboration between Gachon Software Academy, the Ministry’s talent development program, and businesses looking for skilled graduates. In line with the department’s desire to teach leading artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, in 2024 Professor Choi implemented the Oracle Academy Cloud Program to support this.

Choi completed doctoral studies in Software Systems after pursuing a PhD in the Department of Convergence Systems at Chungnam National University and the Department of Computer Engineering at Hannam University.

Oracle Academy: Kindly share with us the objective of the Department of AI Software.

Sungja Choi: In essence, the aim is to produce professionals capable of advancing AI technology and developing software that can revolutionize various industries, from healthcare to finance, education, and beyond. The curriculum begins with foundational courses in software coding and mathematics, progressing to advanced topics such as robotics, data science, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing.

Since AI and software development increasingly rely on cloud infrastructure, my students — and myself — benefit from the Oracle Academy Cloud Program.

Oracle Academy: How did you get involved with Oracle Academy?

Sungja Choi: Our university has used Oracle Academy’s database, Oracle APEX and Java Programming resources for many years. On the recommendation of several members teaching those courses, I discovered the Oracle Academy Cloud Program and began to use it in 2023. Free access to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) was instrumental in my decision and the syllabus has benefited accordingly. Initially, the plan was to use Oracle Cloud for the Gachon Software Academy alone, but thanks to the excellent results of that initiative, the resources are now incorporated into the software-related curriculum of the entire Department of AI Software, including machine learning, deep learning, and data analytics. As a result, …every semester we give Oracle Cloud accounts to 100-plus students for use on cloud-native projects.

I have incorporated the various AI and developer tools of OCI into my Advanced Web Programming and Systems Architecture courses.

Oracle Academy: Can you tell us about your use of OCI?

Sungja Choi: I have designed lectures that will give students the skills to build architecture, deploy services, and enable testing and monitoring. OCI provides multiple tools including OCI Developer Services, Oracle Functions, OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE), Event Hub, Oracle AI Services, and OCI Data Science, and of course the Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) database.

In the Advanced Web Programming course, students work in teams to deploy web applications to OCI, building practical skills by utilizing serverless architecture and container technologies. In the System Architecture course, students learn the OCI-based DevOps process, practicing infrastructure setup and CI/CD pipeline automation. Through this, they acquire deployment and security optimization skills using infrastructure as code technologies.

Oracle Academy: Please tell us more...

Sungja Choi: Concretely, in the last semester senior students enhanced their practical skills through cloud-native projects important for their future careers. In this process, they designed Microservices Architecture (MSA) based services using Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and event storming techniques, collaborating efficiently using Agile methods. For CI/CD pipeline construction, they used tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and Terraform, while setting up real-time monitoring systems with Elasticsearch, Prometheus, and Grafana to ensure stable service operations. OKE was also utilized to enhance scalability and enable zero-downtime deployments.

With these skills they developed an AI-based blog service, implementing the ChatGPT and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) modules and applying AI security elements. These projects will be differentiators in their employment portfolios.

Oracle Academy: Have any students gone on to take OCI Oracle professional certification exams?

Sungja Choi: About 30% of those who took my classes have already earned the OCI Foundations Associate certification, and an increasing number are planning to follow suit. Many utilize the vacation period to obtain their certifications. In the cloud era, obtaining OCI certification is an excellent credential for employment in the job market of South Korea.

Incidentally, as mentioned, colleagues of mine teach database and programming classes, which expose students not only to the Oracle Database but also to open-source database types. There are many on the market, but Oracle’s MySQL still accounts for almost 99% of backend development projects in South Korea. The Oracle Database remains widely used by both businesses and public institutions and is considered an asset in roles related to database administration and data-related positions.

Naturally, knowledge of the Autonomous Transaction Processing database and the Autonomous Data Warehouse are a must for working in cloud environments.

Oracle Academy: Do you actively collaborate with Oracle Academy?

Sungja Choi: Last year, I participated in a workshop that Oracle Academy conducted for our students here in the university. The theme was Multicloud-based Database and Architecture for the AI Era, which allowed us to delve deeper into AI security testing, among other topics.

The workshop taught students how to optimize database performance and strengthen security using OCI. To implement a multi-cloud setup, I encouraged students to integrate OCI with other platforms such as Kakao Cloud, Azure, AWS, and on-premises environments. This gave them real-world experience in implementing AI security based on multi-cloud architecture.

This collaboration with Oracle Academy was of extreme value, and I will continue to use the content and findings of that workshop in my classes.

Oracle Academy: What are your overall thoughts on the benefits of using the Oracle Academy Cloud Program?

Sungja Choi: In summary, the OCI-based curriculum provides more than just theoretical education, it offers an environment where students can practice the technologies demanded by real-world companies. As a result, students who complete the AI Software program can maximize their practical skills by applying the latest DevOps and AI technologies to their projects, ultimately growing into competitive developers capable of thriving in the ever-changing IT market.

For educators, Oracle Academy helps us to improve the quality and effectiveness of our lectures. Personally, I have greatly benefited from the materials and online environments that support my teaching of AI and cloud technologies — all for free from Oracle Academy. And behind the platform are Oracle's network of experts and the continuous development of cutting-edge technologies. We are privileged.

Oracle Academy: Thank you. And apart from your AI courses, what other activities are you engaged in?

Sungja Choi: I enjoy music in my daily life; it’s a way to relieve stress. And, to become a cool professor, I listen to idol music and attend live concerts to broaden my connection and rapport with students.

I also find small joys in communicating with my daughter, who is conducting research on developing cancer drugs with 3D tumor models at Stanford University. We discuss the potential integration of AI in the bio field.

Additionally, I am exploring ways to easily implement AI machine learning and deep learning in quantum cloud environments, diving into related books and media. I am particularly paying attention to the quantum computing technologies shared on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure blog.

Thank you, Professor Sungja Choi, for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact.