Hey guys, I am in my last few weeks of uni, ready (or not ?) to take my final exams and very excited to begin a new chapter in my life and see how my life is going to evolve from now on. I hope that you enjoyed my blogs as I am very happy I had the chance to share with you some of my experiences and reflections while at The University of Manchester.

I will try to cover a few important topics in this post, but I will keep it brief and only provide a summary of my thoughts and results on them.

Third Year Project

So I finished my third year project in studying the neuron – astrocyte relationship within neural networks and overall it was real success! I gained a lot of interesting insights but I think there is much more to study about the subject in order to provide more accurate and close-to-reality simulation results.

In general, the project is an amazing and exciting experience and I really recommend choosing something that you are truly curious about and keen to work on as much as possible. However, if you enjoy the really challenging and complex subjects, like I do, it’s important to temper those challenges you set yourself from time to time and have realistic expectations for a what is only a 6 – month project. You should also really try to break down your goals and tasks and schedule them properly and ask people for advice when you get stuck, because there is plenty of support available.

Courses and Exams

One of the courses that I enjoyed this year was COMP34412 – Natural Language Systems because it was comprehensive and properly taught in my opinion. The coursework was also interesting (although I think it requires a little too much work for the few marks counting towards the final grade) and allowed us to explore subjects like part-of-speech tagging and sentiment extraction from text, with Python and NLTK.

Some pretty cool topics were also covered within the course unit COMP34120 – AI and Games and it actually gave me valuable experiences to talk about at job interviews, since we basically had 2 team projects more or less related to machine learning techniques.

This year I also took a full year course in Spanish, which was a delightful and cheerful part of my life through all of the hard work and bugs of the CS courses. And useful since I am now going to live in Barcelona for my MSc course next year. The exams (written, aural, oral) happen before all the others and it’s great because you get less stressed during the big exam period.

Now for the Computer Science exams – my one and only important piece of advice for high marks is to have a look at past papers. I am usually the type of person who likes to be sure that my revision covered everything there is to know and that I fully understand all the theoretical concepts before anything else. But the practical element of actually doing practice papers is actually more important, as it’s great preparation to know the type of questions that are probably going to be asked when you sit down in your exam.

Jobs and Interviews

I have had quite a few interviews by now and I can say that the more you do, the better you become. For an entry level job, they don’t expect too much, but they do expect something and it also matters to show passion and confidence in what you are doing.

One thing that I noticed and might be useful to know about technical interviews is that bigger companies usually ask typical HackerRank type questions with data structures and algorithms, but start-ups or smaller companies tend to ask more creative technical questions, something that is usually related to their work, like scraping the web, building a chatbot or pair-programming with unit tests.

After having 5 interviews with the same company (yes, that is frustrating because I thought it was over after the 3rd one, but somehow rewarding), I am about to start a summer internship before going to Barcelona in September.

Manchester and Me

Although I’m now leaving I’m sure I will get nostalgic from time to time about Manchester, when I think back in the future, as I have a lot of memories here and it helped me grow in so many ways.

Something that I particularly enjoyed especially this last year was introducing a little bit of ‘Latin fever’ into my life! By this I mean salsa, bachata and all the other latin dances that are really passionate and awesome to get involved in. There are many places in Manchester which host dance classes and Latin-themed socials, but I totally recommend Revolucion de Cuba – it’s the one places I will miss the most. Make sure you take a visit and bring your dancing shoes!

All in all, I believe that university is a great experience to develop yourself in as many ways as you can, to explore the academic areas that interest you and also your approaches towards learning new things and dealing with challenges. But above all, you can discover new cultures, make new friends and try out new activities, which all contribute to building the best version of yourself!

Love,
Ana

Although it’s already March I wish you all a Happy and Productive New Year! Be it professional or personal growth, I wish you the best of luck in anything you put your minds to! Like I said in my last post, I would like to share with you a recent and exciting accomplishment of mine. At that moment I didn’t really know whether it would turn out to be a success or not, but now I do, so here it is: I got accepted for a Master Degree in Sound and Music Computing at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona!

It might not sound like such a great deal as I am in my final year so I was expecting to make a decision on my future. But it really is to me because of 2 main reasons:
1. I found a CS branch that I am very excited about;
2. I will get a whole new life experience in Barcelona!

So how did I discover this programme? Well, it was partly accidentally! I was mainly looking into AI related masters in Europe, and found a few interesting ones but I didn’t feel that sparkling desire for pursuing any of them. And then I started thinking that maybe I should work out what exactly it is that I truly enjoy the most – and my only straightforward answer was music. And as I have a degree in Computer Science and I like its technical side, I simply googled Music Computing and there it was!

The programme combines subjects like signal processing, machine learning and cognitive science to emphasise multiple perspectives of sound and music and allow researchers to use these in useful contexts. For example, they had projects like playing music with eye movements for people with disabilities or understanding various cultures through analysing their traditional music.

My first interest on the topic is analysing the relation between music and sentiments, as I strongly believe that music affects us in much more powerful ways than we can imagine. And because of that, I would like to research for new ways of aiding individuals who are struggling with either physical diseases, mental issues or just wondering what song to listen to perfectly match their mood. My final year project in simulating neurons spiking also sparkled my interest to better understand what is going on in our brains, so it would be quite interesting to also create a model of how music is constantly tuning the connections within our neural networks.

The university – Universitat Pompeu Fabra is not a huge one, but it is one of the fastest-rising young universities in the world and it is located right next to the beach of Barcelona. My programme is provided by the Department of Information and Communication Technologies and is highly interconnected to the Music Technology Group (MTG) – you can have a look at some of their very interesting projects and software tools: https://www.upf.edu/web/mtg/ongoing-projects .

Where the Universitat Pompeu Fabra is based in Barcelona…

The application process is mainly based on a motivational essay, your CV and your grades, along with an academic recommendation. It is not a very complex process, but you do need to show passion for the subject you want study. Looking back to the essay I have written for The University of Manchester, I remember that one of my long term goals at that stage was to create amazing stuff by combining technology with art. I guess I was quite right about that, wasn’t I?

In regards to moving to Barcelona, I guess I was waiting for this moment for a long time. Manchester has taught me a lot, but the most important thing is that when the time is to move on, you need to find the right place for you. And by right I don’t mean the place with the most palm trees, but the one where the energy feels right, where you truly connect with people and of course, where the work you’re doing excites you.

Before getting my acceptance letter from UPF, I was actually about to apply for other Masters on the same topic, so if you think that you might be interested, there are these other programmes that I have discovered in Europe: Music and Acoustic Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, in Italy and Sound and Music Computing at Aalborg University, in Denmark.

Finally, I hope that I successfully shared my excitement with you and you are now more curious to look further than your speciality or degree, maybe even create your own niche of research. The possibilities are literally and provably endless!

Hey, I’m finally back with some more details about my uni experience. I am writing this in the last week of the term, i.e. the busiest week perhaps, but what can I say, one can only write when inspiration hits.

Although the last few months were not  quite as intense as previous years, in terms of coursework, deadlines (and the stress of dealing with all of them!) I can say that I’ve still been working a lot and now possibly in a more convenient and productive way. Additionally, whilst doing this, I’ve also had the time to reflect on my future options and desires, and on my own personal development.

The most important part for me this past term has been my final year project which I am quite excited about because it gives me the chance to learn about many interesting things that are actually meaningful and appealing to me. At the same time, I love that I am the only one managing the project’s organization, intermediary deadlines, along with the path and extensions of the main topic – that again, I chose.

Before getting into details, I really need to mention how happy I am with my programme tutor, Dr. Eva Navarro-López, who is not only an excellent mind and researcher, but also a wonderful human being. She is the most inspiring, motivating and sincere academic I have met and I do believe that my success in my third year project and perhaps my whole life from now on, will be partly thanks to her.

The project is on modelling dynamical neural networks, its purpose being to give a better understanding of how the information signals are spread in our brains and what are the appropiate equations and parameters to represent these processes. My particular research topic is the interaction of neurons with a specific type of helping cells, called astrocytes, as the exchange of chemicals between these two structures seems to have important effects on which neurons spike together and when. The simulation involves implementing some proposed differential equations in Matlab, plotting graphs of the evolution of the relevant chemicals and energy over time and interpreting the results in a biological context.

The project is very deep into the subject of neuroscience which I have always been curious about, so I am glad I took this opportunity to discover it. The Mathematics behind it is quite challenging and the biology seems fascinating mostly because there is very little accurate knowledge of how neural networks work or how some little cells working together trigger complex reasonings, thoughts, sentiments, memories, etc.

So far, I have read (and watched YouTube videos) about several sub-topics like the human neuronal system, neuron and astrocyte mathematical models, complex networks, non-linear systems or computational modelling, which could be some nice readings as individuals, as well. What I was slightly surprised to discover is the fact that people also developed artificial neural networks containing astrocytes and in some cases they can prove to be more efficient than the usual neural nets. So maybe one of my projects applications will be creating better artificial neural networks in order to solve complex computer learning tasks and push further the limits of Artificial Intelligence.

So, as I might have previously mentioned before, one of my future plans was to do research, mostly in CS ad AI, but when I think about it now, I guess the possibilities are not limited to just that. I could also potentially study more neural processes and complex systems within our bodies, which may be useful for industries like medicine and pharmaceutics, psychology, but also satisfying personal curiosities that probably strive in all of us.

And to leave you with another motivating curiosity, I will say that I am currently working on my application for a very exciting programme that may prove to unravel the main purpose of my life. Just look for my soon-to-be be next post, as I feel like, if it deserves such a close place to my heart, it also deserves an individual blog entry!

Till then, I hope you all had a lovely and peaceful Christmas holiday, and took the time to reconnect with  loved ones and with yourselves and finally, be ready to come back with fresh energies, goals and study thirst for exams (for us students)!

Second year is really tough for everyone, including me, but it’s almost over now and I’m back with a fresh entry about my last Hackathon experience, that just happened to be StudentHack VI, one of the most famous hackathons around here, in Manchester.

I’ve been to more than 10 hackathons around the UK, but the ones organised by The University of Manchester every year (GreatUniHack and StudentHack) are definitely among the best ones. Maybe I feel this way because I was familiar with the people and the vibe, but it’s definitely worth trying for yourself. And it’s a great experience to go and code along with your peers in an informal and actually fun environment. Even if you do something worthy of a reward or not. And the best part: you get tons of free food and swag!

I managed to build a cool project that I’ve been kind of thinking about for a long time. I initially arrived a bit late and realised I did not have a team, whilst most of the people were already seated at their tables brain storming ideas. I looked around and managed to find a few other, shall we say, “lost” people, whom I didn’t know, of course. But we talked a bit and decided to work together after we agreed to the idea of computing emotions and music. Well, something like that. We researched some APIs, and after something like 12 hours, we had a working website that recommended a hard coded Spotify playlist, based on your facial expression (Microsoft Azure API).

The goal was to log into your Spotify account and the algorithm would recommend a playlist from your own preferances, again based on the mood on your face, but also some tags of the songs. (There came in our creativity and personal reflections of how music features should relate to sentiments, which I found pretty challenging and fun.) We were close, but still needed some debugging to make it work. The final demo would only recommend some hard coded playlists that we found representative for the various moods (happiness, anger, surprise, fear, etc). But after all, that’s what hacking is all about! Making it “kind of” work! (Here is the trial link, you will have to select the guest session: https://playmymood.glitch.me/ .)

Although the project itself was not very difficult to build, I was quite satisfied with
1. the new awesome hackers I got to work with and
2. the awesome idea I got to work on.
And of course, improving my coding skills and enjoying myself. Not to mention that I even got to dance on “Despacito” somewhere in the middle of the night!

Further on, I would like to continue developing this project, maybe at some point this summer and who knows what will turn out of it. I am really interested in researching more in this music-sentiment association. I’ll let you know how that goes. Until then, good luck with exams and have a wonderful summer! And don’t forget to check the MLH website for some of the coolest hackathons! (https://mlh.io/)

It’s been a while since my trip to Brazil last summer, but I would like to tell you about how I managed to get there without paying too much money and by committing to a wonderful cause at the same time. Now, it’s around the time when last year I started my journey towards the £2,800 and I can say that it might have been one of the most complex tasks I’ve managed to fulfill so far.

The whole thing was one of the Manchester RAG challenges (find more about them here: https://www.facebook.com/manchesterrag/) that I had discovered at the Freshers Fair at the beginning of my first year at university, also when the coursework was much easier and I had the time and energy to get involved with other interesting things! I thought about it for a while, and somewhere in October 2016 I decided that I want to raise money for The Children’s Society and go on the ‘Brazil Trek’. What was their challenge? Go on a ‘dangerous’ trek through the wildlife of a Brazilian rainforest in order to raise the target of £2,800 for the charity organisation.

So the fundraising started. My first thought was to create a Facebook page, which I did, and keep sharing and encouraging people to donate. That was somehow useful, but not at all as good as I had expected because people DO IGNORE you a lot on Facebook. There were some kind hearts who actually contributed and to whom I am still thankful and grateful. (Also, I’m sorry if I spammed too much, but it was for a good cause.)

Throughout the next months, there came some series of bake sales. I did COOK a lot (after earning a health certificate), but I also developed useful skills like talking to people, convincing (and begging sometimes), learned about selling techniques and how to SMILE nicely, despite the many rejections. They are not quite the usual skills a computer scientist would look for, but there will be a time when they will prove useful, maybe at some point I will have  my own start-up organisation and I will want to sell my software to companies. I think that any new experience adds up to your own character and makes you a richer person.

When I talk about selling, I don’t mean the actual exchange of goods, I mean selling my cause. So I was fundraising for the Children’s Society because they would help the most vulnerable children in the UK, from disadvantaged, abandoned or neglected to children affected by violence, bullying or sexual abuse. And I believed in my cause as I think that children are the most important ‘thing’ we should take care of because they are our future and they have the highest potential and energy to improve our world. (You can check out my fundraising platform with all my motivations and donations here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ana-pandrea.)

Rather than describing all the other fundraising activities that I organised, which were quite a lot (charity party in my hometown, concert, talent show, amulets sale to name a few…), I would like to only talk about my favourite one and 2 major benefits I got from this whole project.

My favourite activity was busking before Christmas in Bucharest, as I got the chance to meet with people from my high school choir and other wonderful friends who volunteered for my campaign. I relived the joy of our traditional Christmas carols and the magic of that time of the year in a bit of a different manner, a more noble and fulfilling one, as I was singing for those who might not have experienced such feelings in their whole lives.

The main benefit of this experience was the team that I was part of during those 9 months of hard work and the leaders who made it all possible, by giving numerous fundraising suggestions and forever encouraging us. We all vibed together in the final Brazil trek and although there were difficult times for some people, we enjoyed being with one another for the adventure of a lifetime, along with taking in some amazing natural views. It’s really nice to connect with such motivated and proactive individuals (especially if you are one yourself) as you can count that they will always do something meaningful with their lives and those around them.

A second thing that was really worthy for me was the opportunity to travel around the UK while going to weekend street collections. I would spend hours standing with a bucket in my hand and asking for spare change, but I would also wander around new places, take nice photos and perhaps meet fundraisers from other cities or talk to locals.

In this whole context, one might wonder how I managed to keep up with school and study and the answer to that is that it was a bit difficult. I got really busy at some point, I might have skipped a few lectures and more hours of sleep, but I would say it was worth the extra stress!

Getting to the trip itself, it consisted of  6 continuous days of trekking through a natural reservation south of Rio de Janeiro and was amazing through all its tight pathways and colourful birds, wide sandy beaches and all sorts of palm trees, friendly locals and awesome guides, delicious fresh fish, tasteful exotic fruits and strong Caipirinhas! Last but not least, it was delightful because of the cheerful, determined and fun spirit of my team, even after 6 hours of climbing up and down the beautiful hills.

To conclude, I suggest you take such a challenge because it’s a chance you don’t get too often and will definitely become a memory you will never forget! Like they say, anything that gets your heart racing is worth doing… and I can assure you this one does!

I’m almost back in Manchester after a relaxing summer in my home country and although I’m sad that it’s over, I’m excited to discover the second-year challenges waiting for me when I get back. This entry is more about what to expect as a 1st-year student about to start the AI degree or just any innovation-driven individual.

Artificial Intelligence. It’s a worldwide trend used in technology and known as the ‘future’. It can be a confusing term from time-to-time because different people use it with different meanings, but one main definition is: a machine acting as an intelligent human being (or even better perhaps?). This can all be relative, of course, but it’s just a concept, an ideal target for coders and you can take it as it is.

For a beginner, a good start for getting to know this field is studying machine learning and probabilities. Don’t worry, you will have them covered in your degree at some point, but if you are really interested and understand a bit of Maths, I recommend taking a free online course. It could be quite useful especially for Hackathons if you plan on doing some (which I strongly advise, too).

Anyway perhaps your asking why would you take this degree rather than the usual Computer Science? When I first came here I was questioning things like, whether I made the right choice? Or what if I want to know about other fields like, mobile applications or the internet? Well, initially, it’s actually the same thing as one thing you should make a note of is that the first year is the same for both AI and CS.

What AI does have different are some optional course units that become mandatory for the next year and you can also switch from your current degree to another type (within the School of Computer Science, of course), if you decide you want something else. I’d advise that during your first year, just stay focused and pay attention to what you enjoy most.

For those of you who already know AI is what they want, don’t expect too much of it in the first year. That is why I started with talking about independent study and in fact, it’s a healthy attitude towards anything that your Professors and advisors will keep on encouraging.

Some other related key terms that you will encounter and I haven’t named yet, are smaller topics within the field like natural language processing, speech recognition, cognitive computing or tools like classifiers, neural networks, deep networks. There are also many more and you will need to decide which type of human intelligence you want to exploit and aim for.

There is also something else to talk about in this context, called data science (and big data) and this is what you basically need to run your tests and improve your systems. It refers to extracting useful knowledge from various data sets, which would look like an intelligent behaviour, so: Artificial Intelligence. In addition to this is the fact that you need to decide which kind of data you want to analysed, be it medical reports, restaurant reviews or dog images!

From my perspective, AI is about a better understanding of people and the world. It is about creating means of discovery and it is about finding information that people cannot observe by themselves.

All in all, what I can conclude, even though I don’t have too much experience yet, is that you have the flexibility and freedom to do many things at Manchester. Anything you are curious or concerned about, you will be able to learn about and you could find yourself motivated to change something. However, before we think about changing the world, there is a long journey to take and I’m sure along the way it will be filled with lots of bugs and self-discovery.

Till next time,

Ana

If you’re interested in the Artifical Intelligence BSc course find out more information.

Hi, my name is Ana, and I do a lot of things, and I am passionate about each of them. Today I will talk about myself, some of my different “faces” and maybe some of my philosophies. If you keep on reading my blogs, you’ll continue to get to know me, for sure!

First of all, I’m a student in the School of Computer Science and I really love it.  I like building stuff and making it work, and I like solving problems – (good) hacking. My degree is in Artificial Intelligence but there’s something interesting to learn from each course or aspect of CS, and when you can’t find a good challenge you can just create your own! In my case, the truth is I do fall behind with my studying from time to time and I can’t really solve as many problems as I want to, not yet at least. But uni isn’t just about that. It’s also about getting to know yourself and trying out real life. (photo: hacking at GreatUniHack)

Here comes my second “face”: I am a people’s person, which is quite weird because I am also an introvert who enjoys spending a lot of time alone. However, there is no point in solving problems if you don’t do it for other people. Coming to uni is the best opportunity for both working on your social life and devoting time to the community. That is why I became a fundraiser and a student rep for the school and also became a more talkative person who loves to party! My piece of advice is to pay attention and ask meaningful questions because everybody knows
something that you don’t and you never know who’s going to be your golden treasure. (photo: selling Romanian amulets for charity)

And finally I will reveal my third face; I am an artist. I’ve been an artist my whole life, and I continue to surround myself with art. I’m the one who dances until there’s no one left on the floor, the one who plays the guitar until her fingers bleed, the one who paints with her whole body, the one who keeps on running because the beat feels so alive and the one who discovers a new type of art every day. Manchester is filled with all kinds of art; with its wide range of cultural attractions and there’s plenty of space for your own! (photo: singing in the gospel choir)

So the answer to the question “What do I do?” is not that obvious. I’m not 100% a computer scientist, and even if I wanted to be, I couldn’t. In fact, if I were one, I’d no doubt be working on a project now instead of babbling away on this blog. However, this is the career that best suits my personality and helps me understand my life as a whole. I might be too much of a Carrie Bradshaw for “Hack and the city”, but I think that being successful in your career isn’t as important as being you. Now, what do YOU do?