'He's going to do amazing things': Glenbrook North student a wizard at the keyboard

Eddie Kim's parents don't quite understand his fascination with computers. But considering he's a model student, they're totally behind it.

Glenbrook North senior Hyun Min Kim, who goes by "Eddie," is a whiz at computer programming and mathematics.

President of the school's Coding Club, he and sophomore teammates Tom Mitchell and Ben Witzel displayed that in a second-place finish out of 235 teams registered for the international Carnegie Mellon Informatics and Mathematics Competition run remotely on Jan. 30.

Eddie's father, an ophthalmologist, and his mother, a stay-at-home mom, are proud of their son. They are not, however, wizards at computer programming.

"Personally, for me it's funny in my house because my mom and dad are both supportive and encouraging with me in coding, but they're not too interested in computers themselves," the young man said.

"They use them, but they're not too into coding, so it's hard for them to think that coding is something you can be passionate about. But they're proud, for example, of the accomplishments like the CMIMC."

And accomplishments like the 102-page research journal Kim self-published as a book last October: "Real-Time Coding: One Student's Exploration of Computer Science."

Accomplishments such as Eddie's participation with the Glenbrook North Math Team. Under the direction of computer science teacher Steve Goodman, until the coronavirus subtracted the 2020 event Glenbrook North was on a three-year run of winning its division for schools of more than 751 students. Eddie Kim was on the Spartans' 2018 and 2019 state-championship teams and placed sixth individually in 2019.

Kim has other honors out there. They're all available on his own website - or "blog-slash-research portal-slash-portfolio," he called it. It's populated with various algorithms, research projects and computer programs that likely keep him, and thankfully not his parents, awake at night.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim aren't the only ones proud of their son.

"Eddie took charge this year and became a leader and really revamped the way the club had been operating. Instead of piecemealing little lessons thrown together Eddie thought it'd be neat to have it project-based," said Goodman, who has had this humble, "quiet leader" on the Glenbrook North Math Team all four years and in Coding Club the last three.

"It's been a success," Goodman said.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kim moved to Northbrook with his parents and older sister, University of Illinois student Min Hye "Sarah" Kim, when he was in the seventh-grade, at Maple School. Eddie quickly joined the school math team. He's always liked math.

"I think it's the fact that you can have different, creative ways to solve different problems, and you can find your own creative ways," Kim said.

That came in handy during the Carnegie Mellon competition when the Spartan trio needed to improvise their own programs for the three-stage "Optimization Round" of the competition. There was no one "correct answer," but there were any number of ways to solve the problem based on the students' innovation, critical thinking and chops.

The second series of tests required contestants to create artificial intelligence for three different games, Goodman said. Artificial intelligence is something Kim may explore more in college, as he's just now developing a taste for it.

Kim develops websites, solves Rubik's Cubes and, for example, does "Analysis on Public Perception of Nuclear Power and Waste," but he's not all numbers and logic.

He's gone downhill skiing with his family since he was 3. Over the years at Glenbrook North he's participated in track, soccer, volleyball, chess club and orchestra (he played cello), and has been active in charity efforts.

It's just that math, and now coding in particular, won out.

"I think what's really interesting in coding, is in math there are various solutions for a problem but in coding there are even more," he said.

"For a task such as adding two numbers you can have multiple different ways of writing a program, and each program may be more efficient than the other. And dealing with these is fun to me. Trying to optimize code to run faster or use less memory is something that is fun for me."

His parents may not quite understand that. A whole slew of employers will.

"He's going to do amazing things and I'm excited to follow his career and see what he creates, see what he contributes to society. I have no doubt that he'll be a team leader on some important project," Goodman said.

"The interesting thing about computer science jobs is I think that he'll end up working on something that probably doesn't even exist yet. But he'll be great."