Through the generous support of a Korean government-sponsored scholarship, I had the opportunity to pursue a biomedical engineering degree. In August 2022, I earned an MEng Biomicrosystem Engineering degree at Korea University. While at Korea University, I worked as a full-time graduate student at the Korea University Biomedical Optics Laboratory, where I honed my experimental and computational skills. While at the Korea University Biomedical Optics Laboratory, I was involved in a research project where I developed an image processing and dispersion compensation pipeline in MATLAB to provide a functional-contrast capability to a custom-made spectral-domain Optical Coherence Microscope (SD-OCM) system to elucidate the effects of Y27632, a Rho/Rho-associated kinase activity (Rho/ROCK) inhibitor, on the intracellular motility of cardiac fibroblast cells. Rho/ROCK has gained the spotlight in an urgent campaign to find a pharmacological therapy that can halt or reverse cardiac fibrosis because increased Rho/ROCK activity has been shown to play a significant role in the processes leading to cardiovascular diseases. The novel technique has verified the correlation between Rho/ROCK inhibition and intracellular motility reduction and shown the potential of SD-OCM systems to search for other intracellular-motility-associated therapeutic strategies for cardiovascular diseases. The results of this project were presented at an international conference and published in a top peer-reviewed optics journal. After graduating from Korea University, I devoted a substantial amount of time exploring South Korea to learn more about its history, people, and culture.