ScholarX_First_Review
I am really glad to get onboard with ScholarX because I have found that this program is so much helpful for undergraduate students like us to shape up our future career more accurately. I choose Mr. Rukshan Batuwita, a senior data scientist of Google, and my mentor and he was very friendly with me from the very first minute that we start our conversation.
So far, we have conducted two online meetings and some information exchanges regarding academic stuff through email. The first meeting was an individual meeting and he and I did a self-introduction including passionate paths and goals. So, he got and idea about what I am up to. Then he explained how he found his success and it was quite interesting. Then I had the chance to ask some questions and I thought to be focus on my near future academic career. One of my questions was how to get a good internship, basically in overseas, and what they expect from us as high colors. I think he gave me a good and clear answer. What he told me is, keep my GPA high, do some academic related projects, do some online courses like in Coursera and try to make contacts with professors by taking part in their researches. And the next question was how new technologies like Machine learning, Data Science, AI would affect in the telecommunication sector in the future. He explained me that there are lots of researches are going on especially with data analysis in telecommunication sector with machine learning. So I got an idea to follow some courses about Machine Learning and Data Science otherwise I will be out of track in near future. As the last I asked a different question, how to balance a busy life and be happy. What he point out he prioritizing the events that are more important to you. That session gave me a good incite to accelerate my career.
Second session was a round table discussion and all the group members were there. It was good chance to get to know each other and we asked questions and gave our idea about related topics that we are interested in. One point that I found was, since we are interested in different areas, we could share our knowledge and get some ideas about other fields a that we should keep in touch with. And we could get some advices even form the group members who have already ahead in our area. So, that was an extra benefit I got form this session. And we stared a google doc a to put some links and other information, so that we can share our knowledge with others. I think I have got an amazing teams since they looks pretty experienced with new areas like machine visions, Neural networks, Data science and so on. One point I think that I must mention, Dr. Rukshan explained how to spend our time effectively in the undergraduate period. The first thing he mentioned is pay more attention to learn the theories and the fundamentals deeply rather than doing spending more time on projects. But we should do some projects as well to get the practice. He told that If we have some extra time, we should try do a research and put some good publications so that it will be a plus point in finding a good university for higher studies. And he asked to do Applied researches rather that theoretical researches because it is easy to do in a short time period. Some other points that we have discussed is how to start our career in a new field and what are the basic steps to follow.
I have found out that this program is really helpful for us and glad to be here :-)
