My favorite class this semester so far has been my Mobile Applications and Services class. It is a really well-rounded class that is making me think about every element of a business and creating an application. I’m working on a team with another undergrad and a grad student (Boris, who I wrote about two weeks ago) but I also get to meet the other grad students in my class. This week I spoke to Paul, who is from Marseilles, in the south of France. It’s the second largest city in terms of number of inhabitants in France (and I’ll be visiting at the end of this semester)!
Paul, similarly to Boris, is doing a double degree with his French school ENSEA in Electrical and Computer Engineering. After completing this semester, he will be doing a 6 month internship, then in the January he will head to Atlanta, where he plans to graduate in May 2020. When I asked if he’s ever been to the States, he laughed and said no and asked me how it was. I’ve never been to Atlanta so I wasn’t sure but I told him he can definitely come visit me in Colorado!
The reason Paul decided to come to Georgia Tech-Lorraine was because he thought it was a good opportunity to get more experiences regarding his specialty, computer engineering and systems. This semester he is taking mobile applications and services, network securities, wireless networks and computer vision. While he doesn’t know specifically what he wants to do, he knows he wants to be a software engineer at some point. Regarding specific interests, he mentioned cloud engineering is of interest to him, but has worked in the past at an imaging company. At the imaging company, there were some similar topics to what he has learned in class, his favorite classes being computer vision and network securities. He likes the idea of working somewhere that is creating things that help people who are sick or have some sort of disease. Imaging is “fun” because he says “with a single scanner data you can reconstruct a whole patient’s body.” It’s definitely “100% creepy,” but really interests him, and he thinks it’s really important work.
He mentioned he is going to do an internship at a company called SAP, a software company, but is not sure what specific work he will be doing. They are the number one company in France, Oracle’s competitor, and do software services for different companies.
While he doesn’t go home a lot, he said he watches a lot of mini series and films in his free time. It was really great to get to know Paul better, and I’m looking forward to being in class with him. I really enjoy taking a class with graduate students because they bring a completely new perspective to the table. Especially the graduates students from France. In the next few weeks I will update everyone on more of my adventures as well as some more graduate students I meet!
See you soon!
Noa