Osher Lerner ’19

Adventurer, lifelong learner, skateboarder. That’s just a few ways to describe Osher Lerner ’19. After spending the fall semester studying abroad in Seoul, South Korea, he returned stateside to continue his studies at UC Berkeley in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics.

Osher recently spent time reflecting on his time at Nueva, opportunities he’s seized since graduation, and his love for tackling the unfamiliar.

Tell us about life after Nueva. My favorite thing to do since high school has been engaging in new communities. At UC Berkeley, I’ve had the pleasure of fraternizing with skateboarders, linguists, astronomers, actors, botanists, salsa dancers, and more. The diversity in the city is just lovely. I’ve also enjoyed organizing meetups and communities of my own, notably a very tight-knit machine learning student group as well as some esports teams and competitions.

You are majoring in electrical engineering and computer science with an emphasis in machine learning, and minoring in physics. Have you explored any long-term career goals? My goal is broadening existing engineering efforts for sustainable technologies using AI algorithms. But like many other young adults, my future is still undecided. I’m also considering pursuing teaching and research in theoretical physics.

What are some of the recent opportunities you’ve pursued? I’ve done some crazy cool jobs. My brother Yoni ’17 and I worked together in Chile to discover recipes to replace meat and animal products with equally tastin’, smellin’, lookin’, and cookin’ plant-based sources.

I helped astronauts aboard the ISS find some missing duct tape while working at NASA to automate logistics of deep-space missions using deep learning. Most recently, I tried an academic position researching autonomous navigation for rovers on the surface of other planets.

From these three roles, I learned how to collaboratively cultivate ideas among researchers, the bizarre legal beast that is the U.S. government, the popularity of mayonnaise in Chile—but most of all, I liked working with my brother!

How has your time at Nueva impacted or influenced your interests and passions? Life changes over and over again so it can be hard to hold on to the past. Nueva encouraged my curiosity, passion, and compassion in a way that’s absent from most cultures I’ve immersed in since. Sometimes I feel the Nueva spirit within me flutter like when I channel Anna Sandell’s ’18 explosive kindness. In a history of technology class during my last semester, Lee Holtzman (and her dad) imparted and exemplified so many life lessons that I asked her how I could possibly retain them when I went out into the world. She said, “If you forget, just ask me.” Nueva is not just a memory, but an active community I’m still learning from.

Have you continued working on any of the projects or subject areas you were passionate about as a student at Nueva?

I spent a lot of my hours at Nueva with the robotics team, where I plunged into several technical projects. A lot of our wild ideas I’ve since discovered are legitimate fields of academic research in computer vision and control theory. Even more than my own progress, I love seeing current Nueva students developing these initiatives now, continued and improved through generations of programmers on the team. I do my best work on passion projects when I contribute to self-sustaining communities, and I’ve been learning to create inclusive spaces for that purpose ever since Team 4904.

You took on a new adventure studying and living in Seoul this past fall. What was that experience like? Seoul was such a blast. Intoxicating and vast. Noncompliant and smoothly efficient. Generous and subtly genuine. I worry I can’t communicate the experience authentically, but I can wholeheartedly recommend living there for a semester or two. I went because I wanted to sharpen myself on the unfamiliar, so I might take on a more definite form in the absence of the pressures of home. Well, since going there, it’s no longer so unfamiliar, and now I have a new home.

I was only there for four months, but this city quickly became my world. In that time the weather went from sweatilysweltering to hair-freezing (folliclefreezing? hair-hielo?). I have my usual PC bang, kimbap suppliers, skateboarding spots, and stray cat friends, plus I’ve been adopted by a group of older sisters.

Tell us about studying at Yonsei University. I hoped to broaden my horizons through classes on language, democracy, fiction, and abstract mathematics, and somehow ended up performing in a musical-turned-play-turned-improv-show.

The school is famous for its cheer team, who compete with our rivals at sporting events more than the athletes do—and they host the world’s hottest K-pop groups in our annual school concert. By chance, I met an old friend studying here too, my Nueva classmate Kiki Kim ’19! She is wonderfuller than ever, and it was such a joy to learn together.

How has living in South Korea broadened your global perspective? It’s been enlightening to contrast Korea’s contemporary history with Israel (my birthplace). Israel is profoundly disparate, yet shares a similar ongoing split-state conflict, a mandatory draft, idolization of American culture, and a love of the board game Rummikub. Seeing the minutiae of these manifest differently in South Korea reveals that unshakable, fundamental aspects of society aren’t inevitable.

Living as a foreigner specifically, I got to mingle with the weirdos of the world who left home and became foreigners there, too. We frequently communicate through three or four languages simultaneously when a group shares no common tongue. Compassion and reservation of judgment allowed me to learn from beautiful people with violently opposing attitudes to my own, and I am reminded of the limits of my own understanding.

You shared you hope to return to live in Seoul again. Would it be to pursue postgraduate studies or to live and work? My first priority in returning to Korea is to reconnect with my newly found family there! I am enamored with the ebb and flow of daily life in Seoul, though the work-culture is inescapably brutal. I’m hoping to primarily attend a Korean language school and do post-grad research or work part-time on the side. The case for living there long-term is increasingly compelling, though.

As you reflect on being a few years removed from Nueva, do you have any advice for current students? If you manage to worry less about college, jobs, relationships, and all that, you may be more receptive to good things already coming your way. I’m already certain you’ll figure life out yourself, but in the meantime I hope you can be happy.